Understanding Bangladesh

Of rural bankers and 'phone ladies'

Checking in with those who read the blog and answering questions as we go.

We were out of town for a few days and are catching up. We were posed with a blog question about the "phone ladies." So far we have not ran into any "phone ladies" in the countryside, but we did investigate extensively the works of the Grameen Bank and Grameen Phone.

In Bangla, Grameen roughly means "rural," and the Grameen Bank offers micro-credit loans to individuals to finance projects that a regular bank would not fund due to the extremely low amount of money needed to fund the project.

Grameen Phone works in the same way. A "phone lady" is given a cell phone in a rural area, called a "district" and is given a small stipend of about 2 Taka per call (about 5 to 7 cents). The "phone lady" is given the phone and minutes to, basically to sell. This also gives the woman a chance for some sense of economic independence.

Grameen phone was also recently heavily invested in by a Norweigen phone company, who owns about 40 percent of the company, but was able to maintain the “Grameen” brand name. As we have traveled we have seen billboard, upon billboard, hats, shirts, taxi ads, and etc. advertising Grameen Phone.

We will let you know if we run into any "phone ladies" and describe the process when and if we see it. Thank you for the question and if there are other bloggers with more questions, please ask, we will be here through the first part of August.   |    Login or Join to Post Comments