Core Program UP
|
ULTRA POOR (UP): Including the excluded for ensuring human dignity  The ultra poor have always been left out from traditional financial services in the form of self-exclusion, social exclusion and institutional exclusion. The fundamental reason behind the process of exclusion is the socio-economic conditions and the capacity level of the poor. At the same time, the rigidity of classical microfinance products prevents the participation of ultra poor in conventional financial service system. Considering all these constraints, PKSF revised its existing microfinance products to address the excluded ultra poor segment of the society. The underlying viewpoint of the ultra poor programme has two corresponding ground rules; microfinance needs to be prepared for the ultra poor and the ultra poor need to be prepared for microfinance subsequently. At present, PKSF is running the country’s biggest microfinance programme known as Ultra Poor Programme (UPP).  In general, MFIs have a tendency to avoid risky borrowers usually the ultra poor in order to maintain the high repayment rate despite the fact that group works as a collateral to enforce borrowers loan contracts with POs. On the contrary, ultra poor voluntarily exclude themselves from microcredit at times because of the fear of not being able to repay in time and getting further indebted. The mandatory requirements of microcredit operations like weekly meeting, weekly repayment and weekly savings also discourage the ultra poor. Moreover, the ever-increasing emphasis of POs on viability of their microcredit operations particularly dependant on supplying larger volume of loans to the same borrower virtually rule out ultra poor from the financial system. Acknowledging all these, PKSF has introduced a flexible microcredit programme especially tailored to suit the needs of the ultra poor segment.   Â
-
- In FY 2010-11, PKSF disbursed a total of BDT 1.03 billion to its POs, decreasing disbursement by 11.59% than that of the last fiscal year’s total disbursement of BDT 1.16 billion. On the other hand, POs disbursed a total of BDT 4.31 billion during the same period, which is 2.79% lower than that of the previous FY’s disbursement of BDT 4.43 billion. Although only 5.95% of core programme disbursement of PKSF is attributed to UPP, yet it accounts for 7.78% of the core programme borrowers, which is about 74% of UPP’s total members. Current average loan size under this programme is BDT 7721, which is 19.26% higher than that of the previous FY 2009-10. This indicates the progress of ultra poor’s capacity to utilize the loan. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||