• ALIDE and BNB Internship analyzed the Latin American larger micro financing programs in September.

It is no coincidence that the largest micro financing programs of the region are in Brazil. This has rather been the result of the constant effort of public financial institutions to be at the service of small credits, which used to be unattractive for the traditional banking.
                                    
The cases of CrediAmigo and AgroAmigo, from Banco do Nordeste do Brasil (BNB), have become a regional paradigm. Hence, ALIDE is interested in disseminating it through the internship “Urban and Rural Microfinancing: BNB Programs-CrediAmigo and AgroAmigo”, that organized, together with BNB, from September 15 to 17 in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza, seat of the bank.

As of June 2010, CrediAmigo disbursed US$ 4,500 million to thousands of Brazilian micro entrepreneurs. Along the twelve years since it was created, it has obtained more than 600,000 active customers, a level of default of 1%, and to be present in 1,773 municipalities, through 171 agencies and 104 attention desks.

Based on this success, the BNB transferred this model to the rural sector and five years ago created the AgroAmigo program, as a pioneering instrument to improve the economic and social profile of the family low-income farmer (from the northeastern region of Brazil). In this way, it financed agricultural and non agricultural productive activities that contributed with the family income, the creation of new work opportunities, and the improvement of the farmers’ life quality.

This is the reason why the internship wants to show what the keys to the management were, the work and practice methodologies of both BNB micro financing programs (urban and rural) to share and exchange knowledge with other development financial institutions in Latin America.