SME Financing Program

Agricultural Financing Program

BURO has been implementing a hardcore poor development program for last couple of years where huge number of very poor and vulnerable women are getting financial, technical and social services at urban and rural areas. It designed both financial and non-financial services for the hard core poor based on their need and prevailing situation. A project namely – Economical and Social Empowerment of the Hardcore Poor-ESEHP has been working in Kurigram and Dhaka districts with the financial assistance of Stromme Foundation. The current package of non-financial services include child and adult education, health services, basic life management training for the customers, nutrition training, water & sanitation awareness and support. In addition to that BURO worked with 19000 extreme poor clients in most vulnerable 64 villages in four upazillas of Tangail district as a partner of CARE Bangladesh under its SHOUHARDO Program.

This initiative began since 1995 to increase the productivity of the staff along with its customers intended to lower the costs of services delivery environment of the organization. Human development of the customers emanates thru providing Basic Life Management Training that includes disaster management, environmental health, health and nutrition, employment related skill development training, business management and entrepreneurship development training etc. Human development of the staff emanates thru short and long-term training on organizational development and management, financial services management, program planning, and implementation, monitoring and evaluation etc. At present BURO have three training centers with 28 trainers of different backgrounds.

BURO Bangladesh has demonstrated its abilities to adopt necessary measures at pre-disaster situation and challenge the onslaughts of natural disaster during and post disaster situation. In many natural disasters occurred in last 15 years BURO had taken emergency relief programs with the financial and food assistance from SDC, USAID, UNDP, DFID, WFP, UNICEF, CARE, EC and other donors. It has significant experience to train the local government officials and community people on disaster preparedness and management, developing contingency plan for the Union Parishads etc. Besides, under disaster rehabilitation program funded by its different development partners, BURO implemented infra-structural facilities like low cost house construction, installation of tube well and sanitary latrine, rural road construction, ground raising, homestead raising etc.

Remittance Program Remittance program is aimed at channeling foreign earnings of Bangladeshi expatriates who have been working abroad and sending their earnings to their relatives at home. BURO Bangladesh has developed partnership relations with Bank Asia Limited, Prime Bank Limited, AB Bank Limited, United Commercial Bank Limited, Mercantile Bank Limited, Citibank N.A and Social Islami Bank Limited. in a view to deliver the remittances to its recipients. BURO Bangladesh has been selected by DFID and Bangladesh Bank to act as a channel to transfer fund to the recipients from the foreign remitters. The title of the project is “Capacity Building to Enable BURO to provide Remittance Services to Commercial Banks”. The goal of the project is to establish BURO, in collaboration with the community, with a strong positive image among the most productive and efficient bridges between the commercial banks and community in remittance industry. The objective of the project is to enable BURO to deliver remittance delivery and remittance related services to commercial banks. The organization has already set up terminal facilities in 325 remote branches in order to channel remittances. The terminal facilities have Electronic Funds Transfer Point-of-Sale and a computer package with internet connectivity. BURO recently completed a IFAD funded project to expand the remittance services to extreme rural areas. BURO offered a number of renowned and popular remittance products, these mainly are: 1. Western Union 2. Ria 3. IME 4. Merchantrade 5. Xpress Money 6. Placid 7. Prime Exchange 8. AFX Fastremit 9. MoneyGram 10. CBL -Malaysia 11. Al Jadeed 12. Asia Express Exchange 13. Turbo Cash 14. Cash Express

BURO Bangladesh follows peer group approach. All Groups are with poor women. Each group has one group leader. All members sit together once a week. One field staff discuss different social or local issues, take new decision through information sharing, find business opportunities, collect weekly savings and loan installment, consensciously prepare new loan proposal etc. Some Special features of BURO Microfinance Program: Need based product with scope of diversification Customers freedom Open withdrawal savings Savings withdrawal has no relationship with loan outstanding Loan is optional Use of commercial money as RLF(RelationShip Fund) Strong financial discipline and internal control at branch level Branch office automation with user-friendly software (ongoing) Operational and financial self sufficiency