The Grameen Bank in Enhancing Efficiency/ Skills of its Clients: A Reluctant Partnership

Abstract

The argument for providing microfinancial services in this article is not the conventional microcredit argument that supply-driven microcredit services alone to poor women puts them on a conveyer belt that takes them over the poverty line. Rather, the argument is more grounded in the reality of being poor and those demand-responsive non-financial services especially skill/efficiency enhancing efforts alongside the high quality microfinancial services can help the poor to help themselves overcome their problems. Taking the Grameen Bank (GB) of Bangladesh as a case study, this article explores the provision of client-responsive microfinancial product and skill/efficiency enhancing services and the principles that could be followed by the GB in order to achieve the goal of significant poverty alleviation for rural poor women in Bangladesh.