Grameen Bank
 |
|
| Body Corporate (Bank Law) | |
| Industry | Financial services |
| Founded | 1983 |
| Founder | Muhammad Yunus |
| Headquarters | Dhaka, Bangladesh |
|
Number of locations
|
2,565 (July 2010) |
|
Area served
|
Bangladesh |
|
Key people
|
Ratan Kumar Nag, Acting managing director |
| Products | Microfinance |
| Revenue |
 12,435,830,045 Taka (176.67 million USD) (2010) |
|
8,513,832,110 Taka (120.95 million USD) (2010) |
|
|
757,241,322 Taka (10.76 million USD) (2010) |
|
| Total assets | 125,396,957,972 Taka (2010) |
|
Number of employees
|
22,149 (July 2011) |
| Website | grameen |
The Grameen Bank (Bengali: গ্রামীণ বাংক) is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning microfinance organisation and community development bank founded in Bangladesh. It makes small loans (known as microcredit or "grameencredit") to the impoverished without requiring collateral. The name Grameen is derived from the word gram which means "rural" or "village" in the Bengali Language.
Grameen Bank originated in 1976, in the work of Professor Muhammad Yunus at University of Chittagong, who launched a research project to study how to design a credit delivery system to provide banking services to the rural poor. Based on his results, in October 1983 the Grameen Bank was authorised by national legislation as an independent bank. In 2006, the bank and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1998 the Bank's "Low-cost Housing Program" won a World Habitat Award. In 2011, the Bangladesh Government forced Yunus to resign from Grameen Bank, saying that at age 72, he was years beyond the legal limit for the position.
Muhammad Yunus earned a doctorate in economics from Vanderbilt University in the United States. He was inspired during the Bangladesh famine of 1974 to make a small loan of US$27 to a group of 42 families as start-up money so that they could make items for sale, without the burdens of high interest under predatory lending. Yunus believed that making such loans available to a larger population could stimulate businesses and reduce the widespread rural poverty in Bangladesh.
...
Wikipedia