Bank loans still elude small women entrepreneurs: study

Women entrepreneurs, particularly small ones, continue to remain marginalised when it comes to getting loans from the financial sector despite various initiatives taken over the past decade to facilitate the businesses run by women.

A study presented at a seminar in Dhaka yesterday showed that women-owned small enterprises received only 3 percent of the total small enterprise loans provided by banks and financial institutions between 2016 and 2018.

Banks and financial institutions lent Tk 56,116 crore to small firms in 2016.

Of the sum, women enterprises accounted for only Tk 2,079 crore, which was 3.71 percent of the total small loans, the paper showed.

In 2018, the ratio fell to 3 percent, said Md Mosharref Hossain, an assistant professor of the Bangladesh Institute of Bank Management (BIBM), at the event.

https://www.thedailystar.net/business/news/bank-loans-still-elude-small-women-entrepreneurs-study-1821022