Campo para estudantes
Students’ Corner
Campo para estudantes
Students’ Corner
A TOUR OF INTERNSHIP AT THE GRAMEEN BANK
IN BANGLADESH – EXCHANGES WITH THE NOBEL
PEACE PRIZE WINNER
LAM SI LONG
Urban Management and Business
Administration
Peking University, China
The Grameen Bank (“Grameen” means
“village” in Bangladesh), is the world’s
largest and most successful microfinance
organization, widely known as the bank
for the poor. The organization and its
founder, Professor Muhammad Yunus
were jointly awarded the 2006 Nobel
Peace Prize for their contribution to the
creation of a successful financial model
for poverty reduction. Since its inception
in 1983, the Bank has loaned over 4.5
billion US dollars. With 2,500 branches,
the Bank has benefited more than 8 million
families. Most impressively, the rate of
its bad debts remained merely at 2-3%.
Therefore, the Grameen Model has inspired
similar projects in more than 40 countries.
Together with students of the Commercial
Bank Association of Peking University,
I went to the Bank as an intern with my
curiosity and suspicion about the Grameen
Model, attempting to find out the truth.
“We can put poverty into museums,”
declared Professor Muhammad Yunus,
the founder of the Grameen Bank
and the father of microcredit and
microfinance, to the whole world. It
was very lucky that we could visit him
at the headquarters of the Bank on the
first day of our internship. Having the
honour of meeting a Nobel Prize winner,
we cherished very much the chance to
make exchanges with Professor Yunus.
Speaking of the world cause of poverty
reduction, Professor Yunus said he
especially counted on us, the Chinese
students, because tens of millions of
poor Chinese peasants were now having
difficulty in financing due to the lack of
credit mortgage. Micro-loans could
have great prospects of development
because of their convenience and the
reasonable financing costs.
The next day, we started to learn about the
management structure, business scope,
risk management and other aspects
of the Bank. Our supervisors were two
PHDs of the age of thirty plus. They had
been accompanied us in the subsequent
days, training us in English on the one
hand, and serving as our local translators
on the other hand. Then, we set out from
Dhaka, the capital, to visit the villages and
learn about the mode of operation of the
bank at the grassroots level. As a messy,
noisy, and crowded city, Dhaka was full of
metal-roof pedicabs serving as taxis and
overloaded buses. And the impressive
thing is that there were no traffic rules in
the city. Fortunately, we had a special bus
from the capital to the nearby villages. The
rural area was underdeveloped, and five
days passed by without a bath. However,
the villagers were hospitable, and the
environment was quiet and safe, without
fear of the harassment of vagrants (our
visit coincided with the strike and parade
in the capital).
In the villages, most people we saw were
women and children, and men generally
worked in the towns. Therefore, ninety
percent of the loans issued by the Grameen
Bank were lent to women. Since women
care more about their next generations and
are more careful, they are more capable
of financial management. In addition,
the social status of local women was not
high, therefore, they observe the ethical
code more strictly (The main religion of the
country was Islam). The Bank’s business
was carried out through regular meetings
held once a week in the villages. We went
to a different village each day to attend
their regular meetings, to learn about
the communication between the Bank
and their customers and the repayment
www.grameen-info.org
Muhammad Yunus
www.pku.edu.cn
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Students’ Corner
Campo para estudantes
services. At a meeting, there would be
one representative for each family, and five
representatives constituted a team. The
team leader was responsible for liaison and
oversight of the team members. According
to the regulations, each team member
could get a one-year loan from a branch of
the Bank, and must repay a certain amount
of the loan at each regular meeting. The
annual interest rate of the loan was 10-20%
(if the repayment followed the schedule, the
rate usually was only 10%). Since women
often chat among themselves, most of
them would repay the loan on time in order
to avoid degrading their family. In particular,
the team was not jointly and severally liable.
If a member could not afford to repay the
loan, the Bank commissioner and the team
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Students’ Corner
begging. It was intended to change their
habit of begging, and teach them about
the right path of self-reliance and dignity.
leader would pay a visit to the home of
such member to learn about the causes
and find solutions together. The costs of
such type of loan management were high.
However, because the Bank is a nonprofit organization, such high cost may
be justified by its effectiveness in terms of
poverty reduction.
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We cannot help but doubt that can
a small amount of loan get the poor
out of poverty? In fact, we should
not underestimate the wisdom of the
poor. They would try to make money
out of the borrowed money by raising
chickens for eggs, renting lands to
grow vegetables, buying looms to make
cloth, buying a tricycle to transport
passengers, opening a grocery to
sell goods and so on. And since
Bangladesh is a developing country,
there is a great demand for such small
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businesses, which indeed can get the
poor out of poverty. Such small business
allowed the poor to make a profit in a short
time, so they can make the repayment
each week on time. However, once there
was a flood (Bangladesh is known as “a
country of waters”), the Bank would provide
flexible repayment provisions and disaster
relief loans, which would offer interestfree instalment to ensure the basic living
conditions of the poor. Interestingly, the
Bank would lend money to beggars, so that
they can sell commodities when they were
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These novel ideas shook the minds
of the students of our class, the socalled elite students. Professor Yunus
said, “Credit is a human right.” As long
as the poor were given a chance to
borrow money, complemented by certain
enlightenment, everyone can become selfreliant. As residents of Macao, we have
more opportunities than people from other
places to go to school and get a job. There
is no excuse for us to complain and worry
about money and houses. Everybody has
something that they were born to be good
at. Everyone can become self-reliant as
long as they acquire a skill. The success
of the Grameen Bank proves to me that
the poor should not be worried and the
rich should not be proud, because a family
would not remain poor or rich forever.
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