Where We Work : Sri Lanka : Microfinance

Across Sri Lanka every week, 94,000 women attend their local BRAC microfinance meetings. They come to repay their weekly loan instalments and apply for new loans.

Our microfinance programme has been designed to serve a large number of poor people – mostly women – with reliable access to cost effective financial services. They also receive additional support – such as specialist training and input supplies - for their varied small businesses.

Main features

• Village Organisations
• Micro loans

Village Organisations
The village organisation is the basis for BRAC to provide microfinance and other programs to the community. A village organisation is a group of 20-30 women that meets weekly to discuss credit decisions and make loan repayments.  New borrower groups meet four times before any loan disbursement takes place.

Micro loans
Our main microfinance product is the micro loan. We offer this exclusively to women on low incomes who are not served by other microfinance institutions in Sri Lanka.
Borrowers typically operate businesses that provide products or services to their local communities.
We go directly to the poor women we are targeting and meet them in their villages, homes and places of work.
Borrowers range in age from 20-50 years and have little or no education.

Features of Micro loans:

• Loans for tsunami impacted borrowers with a focus on women
• Loan repayments in small weekly installments
• No physical collateral needed
• Average loan: USD 130
• Competitive interest rates
• Loan forgiveness and grant given to dependants upon borrower’s death
• Services delivered to member’s village
• Available in rural and urban areas