CORPORATE LOANS AND OVERDRAFTS At AKIBA we have never pretended that this is an area of strength for us. However, the main strength that we draw from this lies in the fact that it gives us the opportunity to be there always for our loyal customers who start with us from the early days of their micro enterprises and whom we nurture as their businesses grow and as we graduate them from group borrowers, to individual micro loan borrowers, to SME borrowers and finally to corporate borrowers. As a matter of fact, the growth of our customers has been one of the major factors behind AKIBA’s own growth. Like in the two examples above, we are never short of other examples of customers who started by borrowing TZS 50,000 as recent as five short years ago and are today borrowing up to TZS 15 million and have further had to re-locate their businesses from places like Manzese to the up-market Kariakoo. This is clear proof that microfinance is not a myth, but a reality that is commercially viable, while still achieving the social impact that the pioneers of this concept envisaged. PORTFOLIO SPREAD It is interesting to note that women form the majority of our borrowers. Out of a total of …… borrowing customers in 2005, …… are women while …… are men. It is further interesting to note that out of the …… borrowers, 6500 of them i.e. over 50%, borrow between TZS 20,000 and TZS 500,000.
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