Small loans generate rising expectations
Like most villages in Bogalay Township, Ohn Pin Su’s economy is based almost entirely on rice, leaving families that do not own paddy fields with few sources of income besides the cash their members can earn as day laborers during the twice yearly harvests. This lack of a reliable year-round income leaves families vulnerable to food insecurity, migration and economic shock. Moreover, children from landless families, which in Ohn Pin Su comprise almost half of the 68 households, are more likely to quit school to work, sometimes migrating to towns or cities to work in teashops and homes where they are often exploited.
Small loans and training in the skills needed to operate a business have been effective in helping landless families start businesses that generate year-round incomes. These loans are often the only source of lending such families can obtain, but the results can be startling. It took Nilar Soe, for example, less than two years to turn an $80 loan into a swine-raising business that now provides her with $240 a year in income. The 33-year-old mother of one boy used her first $80 loan to buy a young pig, selling it six months later for $170.
When she bought a second pig she was able to pay for it with the profit she made from the first. She later sold this pig for $250 and one year ago bought a sow so she could start raising piglets, which she now sells for $40 each. “I’ve sold six so far and calculate that I can earn $240 per year from this sow alone,” she says at her small but tidy thatched hut that sits near the middle of the village, which stretches more than one kilometer on the south side of Khu Lau canal.
Along with the loans, family members receive training in book keeping and other skills necessary to operate a business, like poultry and pig raising. Nilar Soe said this training was as crucial as the loan.
“The training taught me how to construct a proper pigpen, how to make sure the pig stayed healthy and also the proper feeding techniques,” she explains. “The piglets are growing fast and none of them have died,” she said.
Now she is facing an unexpected choice: either start a second business with the money she is making or continue saving for her son’s education. “I want my son to graduate from university. Then he can return to the village and be a teacher,” she explains. Neither she nor her husband finished high school, but expectations are rising in the Delta and she has found a way to finance her future. “I’m sure that with more profits to invest my family’s income will keep rising,” Nilar Soe said.
