First Truck Loan to Dukundamatungo Cooperative ...

UOB is a micro finance bank. So its primary lending activities center around micro business loans to micro entrepreneurs to help develop micro enterprises. Trust group loans are a prevalent form of lending. There are some variations to trust group loans for experienced borrowers. Also there are loans that are for those who want to graduate from trust group loans, such as new solidarity group loans and micro business loans.

Over the past few years, UOB has taken innovative approaches in loan products by introducing education finance products, agricultural finance products and energy loan products. These have been introduced in the past.

UOB has made its first truck loan to a cooperative, named Dukundamatungo Cooperative. The truck cost was Rwf19 million of which Rwf16 million was financed with UOB's loan. This cooperative is for dairy farmers. This cooperative has 170 farmers. They all raise cows for milk production. The farmers need to transport the milk that their cows produce twice a day, but they have been lacking transportation vehicles to timely send the milk to milk collection centers or MCCs and further to the buyer or milk processing centers. This 4.5-ton truck will be used effectively to make this transportation process fast and smooth.

UOB has been working with Kiva.org to create a community loan product that is designed to help not one borrower but multiple people through a loan to a community organization, such as cooperatives, like Dukundamatungo. If this works well, we can scale up to other dairy cooperatives for this type of purpose.

May we continue our efforts to advancing the benefits we can provide for many farmers and micro entrepreneurs, Lord! - Jeffrey