MCF EKI: we are helping people earn their living

PanARMENIAN.Net - The European Fund for Southeast Europe (EFSE) aims to foster economic development and prosperity in the Southeast Europe region, including the European Eastern Neighborhood Region, through the sustainable provision of additional development finance. The Fund offers long-term funding instruments to qualified partner lending institutions to better serve the financing needs of micro and small enterprises and low-income private households.

Last year, the EFSE provided a new EUR 4.0 million loan to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Microcredit Foundation EKI (MCF EKI), Tuzla, a responsible microfinance lender focused on rural areas. The loan was issued to enable EKI to expand its outreach to micro entrepreneurs in the rural areas of the country, where agriculture is an important business sector.

EKI initiated operations in 1996 as a microcredit program of World Vision International and in line with the law in microcredit organizations in 2001 the program was transformed into a local microcredit organization. In May 2008 EKI was transformed into a microcredit foundation, licensed by the Federation Banking Agency.

Presently, EKI is one of the top three microcredit organizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a network of 14 branches and 53 sub-branches.

“We are helping people earn their living but, of course, we can’t change the situation in the whole country,” says General Director Sadina Bina, adding that there is a huge need for micro-loans in Bosnia and Herzegovina today.

With EKI focusing on low-income rural families, Mrs. Bina says rescheduling of payments is possible for households affected by natural disasters like fire or flooding.

“Although there are no insurance products, we have different activities to protect our clients and payments can be postponed in some cases,” she said in response to a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter’s question prompted by the huge damage inflicted on the Armenian households by hail recently.

The vision of EKI is to reduce the economic causes of poverty in the country, with the aim to support those people who have no access to banking services.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country in transition, which faces many problems, the worst of them being high unemployment and poverty rate.