By Xinhua
Nanchang (China) : A micro-credit programme for the farmers of Wuyuan county in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangxi has won the international quality certificate ISO 9001:2000.
“The ISO 9001:2000 is an internationally-recognised regulation system. The certification to China’s rural micro-credit programme demonstrates that the country has reached an international standard,” Zhang Li, a quality control expert, said after the ISO certificate was awarded Feb 18.
The micro loans operate by lending small amounts to individuals without collateral, normally 10,000 yuan ($1399) to 30,000 yuan ($4196). The highest amount could be up to 100,000 yuan ($13990).
In total, 33,481 rural Jiangxi households have received micro loans worth 569 million yuan to date to restore their crops and production after the snow disaster.
In 2001, the “Wuyuan model” was popularised across the country. The micro-loan programme was implemented by more than 90 percent of rural credit cooperatives, major sources of capital for agriculture in China, by the end of that year.
“The Wuyuan mode is never less meaningful than the Grameen Bank (or village bank of Bangladesh offering micro-credit to marginal farmers and women). It has tackled the capital bottleneck of the largest population of farmers in the world,” said Fan Fangzhi, a professor of economics at Jiangxi Agriculture University.
The Grameen Bank, started by Muhammad Yunus in 1976, was a micro-finance project to advance loans without collateral to households too poor to qualify for conventional bank loans to improve quality of living and accelerate women emancipation. Yunus won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2006 for his movement that took the world by storm.
More than 100 countries have replicated the Yunus movement.