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Tajik trading places |
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Tajik micro-lending programmes contribute to changing society When Mauluola Shukurova left school and found work, she thought she was settled for life. Back in the 1980s, things didn’t get much more secure than a job with the KGB. But Mauluola got it wrong. Her job in Tajikistan’s second city, Kurgan-Tyube, vanished along with the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, as Tajikistan lurched into a civil war that had claimed up to 100,000 lives by the time it finally wound up in 1997. With her family scratching for work and a small daughter to feed, the former secret policewoman had to start developing business skills to survive. Salvation came almost by accident. On a visit to relatives in the city of Khojand, she liked the bright silky Uzbek scarves she saw in the city’s local market. She bought some and took them back to try and sell on the street in Kurgan-Tyube. Other people liked them too. She turned her first profit. So, like millions of other women in a country where men are notable mostly by their absence – killed in the war, or spending several months a year in relatively wealthy Russia as migrant labourers to try and keep their families in food – she became a full-time trader. Five years on, she and her sister keep a gaily coloured stall, fluttering with hundreds of the scarves, in the dusty city’s packed market. It’s just one of hundreds of stalls in an open space where you can buy everything from pomegranates and tomatoes to plastic shoes and jeans and Mickey Mouse T-shirts and audio cassettes to the traditional studded and hand-painted wedding chests in which the country’s Muslim brides have always kept their trousseau of sheets, long simple robes and delicate scarves. The energy of the market bears witness not only to the difficult recent past, in which old jobs and expectations were swept away, but to the pent-up entrepreneurial talent that hardship and change have brought to the surface – and to intelligent new forms of financing now being offered to the women and men creating wealth on the street. “The first time we bought scarves, it was just an experiment – but this is good business,” Mauluola says cheerfully. “Of course when we started there were no banks, and when there were banks they didn’t need the custom of small traders like us. But now things are changing. This is the second year I’ve taken a bank loan. Last year I borrowed $1,200 to buy stock, which meant I could buy more and sell more than ever before. This year I’ve borrowed $2,500.” Moving into microfinance has put smiles on the faces of local bankers too. According to Khabibullo Thaydarov, Head of Tojiksodirotbank’s branch in Kurgan-Tyube, business has grown exponentially since he began offering loans of less than $5,000 to the city’s market traders. “From October to December last year, we got 28 new clients. In January alone there were 23 more; in February, 33, in March, 38, in April 75, and in the first week of May alone almost 75. We’ve done $600,000 worth of business, and there have been no losses – not a single client has been late with a single repayment.” The EBRD has been a major mover in the development of microfinance since long before 2005 was declared the Year of Microfinance. Almost two years after launching the $7 million Tajik Micro and Small Enterprise (MSE) Finance Facility with the help of international donors, the Bank has now granted credit lines to four local banks, including Tojiksodirotbank, to boost the financing of small businesses. IFC has recently provided additional co-financing ($1 million) to fuel the MSE portfolio growth which will allow more clients to expand their businesses. One of the most exciting developments in microcredit this year is that it now extends beyond banks to small, locally-based non-bank institions with a strong grassroots presence – essentially, NGOs with chequebooks – an important addition to the range of finance options available to people in a country where 65 per cent of the population earn less than $2.15 a day. During President Lemierre’s visit to the central Asian state in June, the first loan to such an organisation was made under a new $10 million EBRD framework facility which allows the Bank to provide on-lending funds to established non-bank organisations with a track record of successful and profitable micro-lending. The $1 million loan was to Tajikistan’s International Micro-Loan Fund “Imon” – the new name for the Mercy Corps micro-lending programme operated by the National Association of Business Women, Tajikistan, since 1999. Imon’s microloans are for amounts as small as 100 somoni and periods as short as three months, usually to people with no previous experience of formal financial dealings – a vital first step up the trade ladder. The new Imon office in Kurgan-Tyube is a house near the market – still bare of all but a table and a few chairs in each room, where traders come in groups for training in how to handle their loan. But there’s an accounts room set up in a room off the back courtyard, where women come to make their monthly repayments and see the sum repaid neatly entered in a ledger. “We now have a great task to fulfil,” said Imon Director Sanovbar Sharipova at a Dushanbe press conference to mark Mr Lemierre’s visit and the signing of the deal. “One loan can change a family’s life. Several can strengthen society. And a thousand can change society.” Back in Kurgan-Tyube, Mauluola Shukurova is hoping the dogged enterprise of so many thousands of people like her now will change society in time for her children to feel the benefit. “If my business goes on growing,” she says wistfully, “I want to get my own shop. But my 16-year-old daughter – I want her to go to college.” Vanora Bennett 23 September 2005 |
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