PKSF

              MFMSF (Microfinance for Marginal and Small Farmers)

Continuing its incessant efforts to meet the credit needs of the poor farmers, PKSF, in the year 2005, embarked upon a project titled Microfinance for Marginal and Small Farmers Project (MFMSFP) with financial support of International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). This programme is the first of its kind in which farmers were particularly targeted in any of the PKSF programmes. The main rationale of MFMSFP was to deliver sustainable demand-driven microcredit services to the poor farming communities in order to increase agricultural production through access to credit, information and latest technologies along with the establishment of the market linkages. The implementation of MFMSFP came to its completion in June 2011. 

Working Areas 

PKSF, in close collaboration with its 35 POs, implemented the MFMSFP in 113 upazilas of 14 districts in the north-west region (Rajshahi, Nawabgonj, Pabna, Kurigram, Thakurgaon, Joypurhat, Nilphamari, Gaibandha, Naogaon and Dinajpur) and in the north-central region (Netrakona, Mymensingh, Jamalpur and Sherpur) of Bangladesh. Activities Operational activities of MFMSFP had been implemented through 3 components- Microfinance Services; Capacity Building & Market Linkages; and Project Coordination & Management. In FY 2010-11, under MFMSFP, BDT 1,281 million was disbursed to POs while POs distributed BDT 3564.41 million to 2,15,573 beneficiaries as agricultural credit including seasonal loan (SL).

As a part of technical support, a number of cost-saving technologies like leaf colour chart (LCC); urea super granule (USG) applicator for judicious and timely use of urea; porous pipes to reduce irrigation cost of rice; pheromane trap; tricogramma parasites and tricoderma bio-fertilizer to produce insecticide-free vegetables were distributed among the project beneficiaries. For technology dissemination, different training modules, booklets, folders, posters and flipcharts on modern rice production method were also distributed among the farmers. The project initiated livestock insurance during FY 2009-10 involving 7 potential POs and found quite impressive results in the working areas.

Achievements

MFMSFP overwhelmingly succeeded in developing and maintaining a sustainable lending and savings system for the marginal and small farmers. The channel of credit flow to and from the targeted beneficiaries has been quite smooth and efficient. POs have been successful in maintaining a very high cumulative loan recovery rate, which is more than 98%. The project was implemented through 342 branch offices of which 318 have already become financially sustainable. In terms of outreach, the project exceeded the target increasing the total number of group membership to 234,684 by the end of February 2011. Women participation has been remarkably high which was 83.64% as of June 2011.

In capacitating the beneficiaries, the project used training as a major tool. Over the 6-year long life span of MFMSFP, a total of 309,042 beneficiaries received training on crop production along with 170,990 and 176,534 beneficiaries, who received non-crop and social training respectively. The contribution of MFMSFP in capacitating POs on agricultural lending and extension has been quite significant. In order to develop technical expertise at the field level, MFMSFP provided agricultural Technical Officer at the PO level and Assistant Technical Officer (ATO) at the upazila level. MFMSFP of PKSF is the substantiation of the creditworthiness of the farmers community. PKSF gained valuable experience and learned a lot regarding agricultural lending based on which, PKSF embarked on mainstreaming Seasonal Loan (SL) in 2006 and Agriculture-Sector Microcredit (ASM) in 2008.