Citibank’s Dhaka branch has announced that it has arranged a syndicated agricultural term financing facility of $21.7 million in Bankgladesh. The 5-year local currency facility is granted to BURO, a microfinance institutions of Bangladesh.
In addition to Citi, other participating lenders include Agrani bank, Dutch-Bangla bank, Eastern bank, Janata bank, Mutual Trust bank, Prime bank, Pubali bank, Sonali bank, Southeast bank, Standard bank, The City bank and United Commercial bank.
Zakir Hossain, Executive Director of BURO, said: “The entire facility will be directed towards the agricultural sector through NGO-linking system, and for the participating banks, this will qualify as agricultural sector lending. The local currency solution provided by Citibank will support expansion of our agricultural micro lending portfolio.”
Mark Robinson, Chief Executive Officer of Citi South Asia, said: We are happy to provide BURO very important access to long-term, local-currency capital, which will help its programs achieve greater scale. This marks yet another milestone in our partnership with the country’s microfinance sector and underlines Citi’s commitment towards supporting the cause of microfinance globally.
Robert Annibale, Global Director of Citi Microfinance, said: “This first agricultural loan syndication in Bangladesh will support lending to small farmers. Agricultural financing, extended by the microfinance sector, now has another source of funding that links the sector to a wide range of Bangladesh’s banks.”
