Berendina Microfinance Institute (Gte Ltd)-BMI - Berendina Microfinance Institute (BMI), was established in May 2007 and promoted by Berendina Stichting; an international NGO which operated in Sri Lanka since 1992 having its headquarters in the Netherlands. BMI is a nonprofit company registered under Companies Act number 7 of 2007 as a company limited by guarantee in Sri Lanka (Registration Number: GL 9)

Activities of BMI

The main service provided by BMI is credit, enterprise development services. The credit is provides as individual loans and they are facilitated through “clusters”. ( A Cluster is a  30 member group formed by 10 small groups of 3 members). These clusters are the focal points for the loan application, collection of repayments as well as the other business development services.

BMI provides credit for various purposes. The main credit products are;

• Asset Building loans: Main purpose of this loan product is to build and increase the asset value of clients
• Business Loans: loans are provided for business starting and enhancement
• Agriculture loans:  Disbursed for farming activities
• Emergency loans: These loans are mainly used by the clients for emergency purposes. A bulk loan is disbursed by the branch to a cluster leader, where he or she disburses loans for emergency purposes to other cluster members

BMI adopts a “credit plus approach”  to increase the effectiveness of loan utilization. Each branch has an officer to provide enterprise development services (EDS) to clients. A coupon system linked to credit is used to increase clients’ capacity to pay for EDS. BMI provides EDS coupons to clients when they take the loan which they can use for the payment of fees for EDS. Under the Enterprise Development services, the organization provide enterprise trainings (for soap making, food preparation, dress making, etc), market linkage, business counseling, etc.