Beredina Micro Finance (BMIC) launched for micro finance
View(s):The newest, not-for-profit microfinance organisation of Sri Lanka, Berendina Micro Investments Company (BMIC), essentially poverty-focused and development-oriented, was ceremonially launched on March 22 under the patronage of State Minister of Finance, Eran Wickramaratne.
Also present were C.J.P. Siriwardane, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank and Charitha Ratwatte, Senior Advisor to the Prime Minister. The event was also graced by Ms. Joanne Doornewaard, Netherlands Ambassador to Sri Lanka; Jos Van Aggelen – Chairman of Berendina Stichting and the Board of Directors and Advisors of Berendina Stichting in the Netherlands. Berendina Stichting is the founder of BMIC in Sri Lanka.
A media release from the organisation said that since 2007, Berendina’s microfinance services were provided by the Berendina Microfinance Institute (Gte) Limited. In keeping with the Central Bank’s new licensing requirements, the microfinance services are now operated by the new company BMIC.
BMIC is owned by Berendina Development Services (BDS), an NGO providing numerous services to the under-privileged of the country.
“Berendina has come a long way and done lot of work to reduce poverty in the country, over the years. But we have not spoken about or publicised what we have been doing, which must change. We must now take our message out to the people, so we can do much more, getting closer to our ultimate goal of completely eradicating poverty in Sri Lanka,” said Jagath Godakanda, Chairman of BMIC, in his welcome address.
BMIC is providing loans at the lowest interest rate among the NGO and private sector micro-finance institutions (MFIs) in Sri Lanka. (The effective interest rate is 26 per cent per year) as opposed to over 40 per cent as in the case in most other MFIs in the industry. The loan amount disbursed in 2017 was over Rs. 3.5 billion.
The statement said BMIC works mainly in high poverty divisions in high-poverty districts in the country and also provides training, business counselling, product marketing and business information, required by low-income individuals and provided by a dedicated and well-trained, full-time staff (over 46,000 people trained in 2017).
BMIC has also embarked on a few initiatives which goes beyond monetary assistance, one of which is to provide scholarships for the bright children of BMIC clients after their OL examinations, until they complete their higher education or vocational training (3,000 scholarships were given by Berendina in 2017 out of which 445 scholarships were funded by BMIC).
Berendina is currently working in the districts of Kegalle, Nuwara-Eliya, Kandy, Anuradhapura, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Ampara, Vavuniya Kilinochchi and MuIllaitivu whilst Puttalam is also in the list.