Few banks as tiny and as recently established have been so assiduously courted as Venezuela’s Bank for Women’s Development, known familiarly in Venezuela as Banmujer.
The bank was set up by the Venezuelan government in March 2001, with an initial capital of 15bn bolivars (a little under £4m at today’s rates), which has been successively raised to 65bn bolivars. By the middle of 2005, Banmujer had made 54,484 loans. Men got 8% of them, but 92% of the tiny advances went to women. The total worth of loans made in 2004 came to no more than 9bn bolivars, but that sum, says the bank, created 47,500 jobs.
