BURO Tangail

BURO Tangail established in 1990 as a non-government organisation for the development of grass roots poor, especially poor women, through village based economic activity. Its mission is to establish an independent, sustainable organisation dedicated to providing effective, flexible, and responsive quality financial services to promote self-reliance among the rural poor in Bangladesh. Its programmes emphasise both savings and credit for increasing self-reliance among the rural poor. The main programme of the organisation is providing flexible financial services, ie, a sustainable rural savings and credit programme. Its other programmes are on human resources development, disaster management, social forestation and tree plantation, primary healthcare, small entrepreneur development, early immunisation, and water and sanitation. The organisation has a general body to supervise all its activities in general and to frame policies, approve annual budgets and reports etc. An executive committee elected by the general body administers its day-to-day activities. The executive committee is headed by an executive director, who is assisted by directors of programme and operation, training, and finance and accounts divisions.

BURO Tangail operates in eight districts. These are Tangail, Mymensingh, Jamalpur, Manikganj, Gazipur, Sirajganj, Bogra and Dhaka. In 2001, it had 86,787 beneficiary members. Its budget for the year was Tk 435 million. About 80% of its funds are generated through donations. Other sources of income include life member fees 2.6%, service charges 7.9%, development levy 3.9%, admission fees 4.6%, bank interest 0.6% and sale of forms 0.6%.

In its ten years of activities, BURO Tangail recorded significant achievements in organisation and in serving its customers. Initially, it developed a sustainable self-sufficient model for micro-finance industry in Tangail district and then replicated the model in other places. It designs its programmes to build on its present achievements, its internal strengths, and external opportunities. It conducted a strategic planning exercise for the period 2002-2006 and identified nine different strategic dimensions for implementation in the stipulated period. Of the strategic dimensions, gender is the most important one. [Shamsul Huda]