Tk 5,927cr scheme to cut micro-credit habit
The government will launch a project worth Tk 5,927 crore to develop a small saving scheme for 51 lakh rural poor families by forming village organisations in 85,000 villages mainly to rescue marginal populace from micro-credit net.
The initiatives was taken under one of the present government's 'One House, One Farm' project to create savings habit among the rural poor.
The aim is to help build own capital of these people for uplifting them from poverty instead of stepping into micro-credit trap.
"We planned to provide grants to the poor people, involving them in various agro-based income generating projects with proper training under cooperatives to make them self-reliant," 'One house, one farm' project Director Prasanta Kumar Roy told the news agency yesterday.
He said various non-government organisations were providing micro-credit with high interest rate at rural areas for past 40 years, but the fate of these people have not changed.
He said the intrinsic objective of the project is to reduce national poverty to 20 percent from 40 percent by 2015, making each household a sustainable income-generating unit through maximum utilisation of human and economic resources.
Under the project, he said 85,000 village organisations would be formed comprising 60 to 100 members in each organisation with a member from each household.
Among the members, 60 of the most poor will get government's saving grants which would ultimately benefit more than 2.5 crore people of 51 lakh poor families across the country.
Roy said the project would bring a revolution in the rural economy, as no project ever covered such a huge number of the rural poor and ultra poor.
The government will provide a maximum Tk 200 to a poor family as savings grant per month for five years against their deposit of a similar amount of money per month under cooperatives.
In this way each recipient will get Tk 4,800 at the end of each year.
"In this way, savings of a poor family will stand at Tk 10,000 in two years including interest of their saving," he said.
Besides, the government will provide 50 percent or a maximum of Tk 3,00,000 to each village organisation against their savings in two years.
Five people of each village organisation will get training on various income-generating activities on agriculture and livestock and later to teach others, Roy said.
"We will be able to create 4,25,000 trained rural people across the country after the training priogramme," Roy said.
The members of the organization can take loan individually or in a group project-wise.
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