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Bank Mandiri provides Rp 300b to PNM to empower women
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Local women from Hobong village, Sentani, Papua, go fishing. Hobong villagers depend on Sentani Lake for their livelihood. (JP/Nethy Dharma Somba)
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tate-owned lender PT Bank Mandiri has channeled Rp 300 billion (US$22.49 million) to state-owned community development institution PT Permodalan Nasional Madani (PNM) to support its women-based finance lending development program Mekaar.
Bank Mandiri government and institutional banking director Kartini Sally said the financing would bear only a single digit lending rate and that the lender would provide bank accounts with starting balances of Rp 50,000 to Mekaar participants.
"If the participants do well [with the loan], they can become our micro customers in the future," Kartini said during a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signing event in Jakarta on Thursday.
Mekaar, which stands for Membina Ekonomi Keluarga Sejahtera (fostering the economy of the prosperous family), is the corporate social responsibility (CSR) program operated by the two state owned enterprises.
PNM president director Parman Nataatmadja said the program focused on women from pre-prosperous families. It forms groups of 30 women and then provides soft loans ranging from Rp 2 million to Rp 5 million per person to create a micro business.
"The Mekaar participants have now reached 1.26 million people, all of whom are women. Our target is 2 million participants by the end of this year," he said, adding that the program emphasized discipline as the participants had to report every day, leading to a non-performing loan (NPL) rate of only 0.0019 percent. (ags)
