The announcement follows a request for leniency covered by this newspaper in a November 29 article.
Source: Microfinance Gateway.
Original article available here.
December 5 – General Moeen U. Ahmed, the army chief of Bangladesh, has asked all microcredit lending organizations to waive payments of loan installments of Sidr cyclone survivors until April 2008. Nearly 3,300 people died and an estimated 564,000 were left destitute as a result of the November 15 storm. It was the second most powerful cyclone to hit the disaster-prone country since record keeping began.
Grameen Bank has suspended all loan repayments until June 2008. Another lender, the Association for Social Advancement (ASA), said it would be offering interest-free loans to help cyclone survivors get back on their feet and that existing loans would be suspended.
“We have stopped collecting loan installment from borrowers in the affected areas up to June 2008. We have also stopped collecting loan installments in the four most affected districts indefinitely. We cannot cancel the debts. If we canceled now, every time something happened, a house fire or whatever, then people would be looking to cancel their loans,” said ASA spokesman Habibur Rahman.
Cyclone survivors have demanded that banks write off all loans although Muhammad Yunus has rejected the calls.
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