Success Stories
- Last Updated on: September 05, 2007
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President and First Lady Bush Visit Micro Credit Recipients
President and First Lady Bush Visit Micro Credit Recipients
FUSHE KRUJA—Disbelief best characterized the emotion of Kujtim Nuzi after hearing he was one of five Albanian entrepreneurs selected to meet President Bush during his visit to Albania in June.
In the days leading to the visit, Nuzi, a 45-year-old owner of a sheep farm 30 kilometers from Fushe Kruja, found it difficult to convince his friends and family of verity of this opportunity.
“No one believed me; I mean who would believe a shepherd would get to meet a President.”
During their recent trip to Albania, President Bush and the First Lady met with Nuzi and four other entrepreneurs who have similar stories of using loans to successfully open and expand their small businesses. In a local bar-café on the main boulevard in Fushë Krujë, the business owners, all current clients of Opportunity Albania (OA), (formerly Partneri Shqiptar ne Microkredi-PSHM), a microfinance institution (MFI) started with USAID funds in 1999, shared their stories over coffee and tea with President Bush and the First Lady.
The President and First Lady heard first hand how credit in the hands of hard working entrepreneurs leads to growth and employment. They met with a cross-section of clients including the owners of a barbershop, cloth store, and a bakery located opposite the bar-café. Nuzi, for instance, started with just a few sheep and a $1,000 loan. Now he has a herd of 700 sheep and 300 lambs, and is managing repayment on a 20,000 Euro loan.
Another client, Klarita Topi, the owner of a bakery, received the start-up capital for the wood-burning oven from OA in 1999. Six loans later, the bakery has been completely renovated; she employs nine workers, and has purchased machines to diversify with desserts and pastries. The President and First Lady visited Topi’s bakery where they were greeted with a cake decorated with an American flag.
After the fall of the authoritarian regime in 1990, commercial and investment credit was difficult to access for micro, small and medium enterprises in Albania. In 1999, USAID collaborated with Opportunity International (OI) to provide market-rate credit to micro-enterprises that could not qualify within the regular banking sector. Four years after establishing the local non-bank microfinance institution, PSHM, it achieved operational and financial self-sufficiency.
Through such programs, the U.S. Government, through USAID, is helping Albania tap the entrepreneurial spirit of its citizens by expanding access to credit to individuals and businesses, many of whom are women and members of minority groups such as the Roma. Since 2005, OA has not only seen a 41% increase in clients to almost 11,000, but also a 73% rise in its loan portfolio size to $26 million. This success has attracted the interest of six national and international financial institutions that have provided resources for OA’s operation. The European Fund for Southeast Europe and Raiffeisen Bank in Albania are considering significant micro-credit programs contracting OA as a partner.
At the conclusion of his meeting with Opportunity Albania, the President said to the assembled media, local dignitaries and OA clients: "Laura and I thank these entrepreneurs for joining us to talk about your story, about your dreams and about the opportunities a micro-loan program provided by the taxpayers of the United States [USAID] is giving you to create jobs."
(See http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/06/images/20070610-1_d-0879-515h.html and for more about Opportunity International, please see www.opportunity.org)
