Brief Presentation

On January 16, 1995, under the auspices of the Society of Jesus, 22 people committed to the peasantry and the development of Bolivia, civil partnership formed nonprofit called FONDECO. In the same year, on October 12, the State recognized FONDECO as a legal person and adopted its constitution and its statutes, beginning its operation.

FONDECO aims to activities designed to promote the socioeconomic development of the rural population and popular sectors of Bolivia, within the framework of the principles and values of Christian inspiration. This is run with the granting of loans and financial services under reasonable conditions to promote their ventures, thus contributing to their quality of life and progress. In this framework seeks to grow and be a leading financial institution at the national level, specializing in credit products and financial services.

For this purpose, since its inception FONDECO has specialized in rural microfinance, is supervised by the State through ASFI, the network consists FINRURAL Bolivia and is also part of the international Foundation Grameen Bank. It finances activities of the various sectors of the economy in several rural areas of the country. FONDECO credits are directed mainly to small farmers, rural micro-entrepreneurs and traders, who have no access to formal financial sector due to financial constraints, legal, geographical and cultural. These funds are allocated to household production and can be applied to working capital or investment. The terms are appropriate to the activity to be financed, so that 55% are placed between 2 and 5 years, during which allows the capitalization of the client. Guarantees also are varied, including garment products (micro-warrant, cattle) and contract farming.

The micro-credit arrangements are: individual and associative. The individuals ones are: agricultural micro-credit (operations and / or investments), micro-warrant of rice, non-agricultural micro-credit (employees, trade, housing, small industry). The associative ones mainly fall under the rural village banking technology, which in FONDECO is called communal fund. These funds are made up mainly of women associated in groups and micro-credit is characterized by low amount and is freely available. In this mode have some other products aimed at producers' associations.

Since 2001 FONDECO is financially sustainable. For registration and control of its operations, we have a comprehensive information system. Both individual as micro-credit associations have a particular software. The information in the loan portfolio is recorded for each individual client. To facilitate the analysis of credit risk of the agricultural portfolio and individual monitoring of the entire portfolio, FONDECO has developed some innovative tools. Also other general purpose tools are used, such as consulting the Centre for Risk and ownership records of: real estate, machinery and motor vehicles.

FONDECO has a network of 15 agencies and two sub-agencies, distributed in five departments (Chuquisaca, La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Tarija), its headquarters are located in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. All these offices are operated by 103 people. The loan portfolio at 30 June 2009 is $ 8.8 million and serves 10,500 clients, of which 60% are women.

Headquarters, Pico de Monte St. Nº 121, Phone 352-0740, Santa Cruz de la Sierra – Bolivia.
www.fondeco.org, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Agencies
Santa Cruz: San Julián, San Ramón, San Javier, Guarayos, Concepción,
Minero, San Pedro, Yapacaní, Buena Vista
La Paz: El Alto, Carreras
Cochabamba: Punata, Cochabamba
Tarija: Tarija
Chuquisaca: Monteagudo