1、 本科毕业论文外文翻译 外文题目： The Story of the Grameen Bank 出 处： Brooks world Poverty institute 作 者： David Hulme 原 文： The Story of the Grameen Bank David Hulme Abstract This paper looks at the establishment and evolution of the iconic Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. It traces the development of the Bank from its or
2、igins, providing microcredit to poor, rural women in Bangladesh, through a period of national expansion and institutionalisation, to the replication around the world of the Grameen model. In the late 1990s the Bank faced repayment problems and a developing financial crisis, and strategies were put i
3、n place to stabilise and reshape the Bank. This led in 2001 to the launch of Grameen II, which is analysed in terms of its main components and its results. Finally, the paper looks at Grameen Banks future role as a major player in the microfinance market, and as an inspiration for those helping poor
4、 people improve their own lives. Keywords microfinance, micro-enterprise, credit financing Introduction The Grameen Bank of Bangladesh holds an iconic position in the world of microfinance. It is credited with proving that the poor are bankable； the Grameen model has been copied in more than 40 coun
5、tries； it is the most widely cited development success story in the world； and its charismatic Founder-Director, Professor Muhammad Yunus, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. By the end of February 2008 it had 7.4 million clients and outstanding loans of $545 million. By any measure it is an
6、organisation that has impacted greatly on the lives of many poor people and on ideas about microfinance, poverty reduction and international development. The group-based lending model, targeted at poor, rural women, that is synonymous with the Grameen Bank contrasts markedly with the two other iconi
7、c microfinance institutions, Bank Rakyat Indonesia and BancoSol of Bolivia. The original Grameen Bank model comes out of what Robinson calls a poverty lending approach, rather than the financial systems approach that she, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), and many US microfinance spe
8、cialists prefer. However, unnoticed by many observers, the Grameen Bank made dramatic changes to its services around 2001 and 2002. Its new model (Grameen II), takes it much closer to a financial systems approach. Although Professor Yunus continues to champion the idea of microfinance for poor women
9、, most obviously through the annual Microcredit Summit, the Bank he directs increasingly lends to non-poor clients, has moved aggressively into savings mobilisation, and is very much concerned with the overall profitability of the mix of its products. Grameen II reflects not so much a reform as a re
10、volution in the Grameens strategy. Rather than challenging the market-based financial systems approach the contemporary Grameen Bank vindicates it. But, let us start at the beginning. Early days As Professor Yunus reports in his autobiography (Yunus, 1999), and as Fuglesang and Chandler (1986) recor
11、d, the origins of the Grameen Bank lie in the dilemma that the young Yunus found himself facing in the mid-1970s. Having completed his PhD in the USA, he had returned to Bangladesh to lecture in economics at Chittagong University. However, he found himself wondering what relevance the economic theor
12、y he taught had to the immediate needs of the thousands of hungry and deprived people he saw in rural Bangladesh. The country was slowly recovering from a vicious war of independence that had destroyed its infrastructure and its productivity and murdered much of its intelligentsia. The damage caused
13、 by the war had been amplified by the famine of 1974, and the country was dependent on food aid. Human suffering on a vast scale could be witnessed in any town or village. Yunus could try to help people by giving them charity, but he wondered whether some of his economic theory could be applied in t
14、he field. His training postulated that if people got access to credit they could increase their profitability, or diversify their economic activities, in ways that would allow them to raise their incomes. So, if he could lend some poor people his money they could improve their lives and pay him back
15、. Then, he could lend the money to other poor people and thus assist many more people than could be achieved by simply giving his money away. It was an interesting theory, but his initial experiments seemed to show it was invalid. Quite a few of the men and women he lent to did not repay their small
16、 loans (sums of US$10 or 20). He thought that this was because they had either used the money unwisely (for consumption or poorly planned microenterprises) or were not trustworthy. As a result, he began to experiment with ways of (i) approving and supervising loans, to ensure they would be used for
17、productive investments, and (ii) selecting trustworthy clients and managing them, so that they would repay their loans. Eventually he came up with a model that worked. This had a number of features: Lending to poor, rural women (as they were less likely than men to use loans badly and were more reli
18、able for repayment). Organising women into cells of five, that took collective responsibility for each others loans (creating social collateral and a peer screening process). Establishing Kendro (centres) where six cells (i.e. 30 women) met, at a set time each week, to apply for loans and make repay
19、ments. Charging a higher rate of interest than government schemes and NGO loans programmes. Requiring clients to make compulsory microsavings each week (to create financial discipline and generate financial collateral for groups), and to make promises about their social conduct. Simple, standardised products that required regular, small repayments. Recruiting and training bright, young graduates to administer services (to minimise corruption). There were many other carefully designed elements of this Grameen model (see
