Lovely Begums fruit garden grows with IBBL microfinance

Lovely Begum of a remote Madhupur village successfully brought in fundamental changes to her life and her family by planting various fruits. 

Lovely, a mother of a boy and a girl, now owns a well-constructed home for living while she once lived in a thatched roofed hut for years. At the time, she could hardly manage meals for her four-member family.

Her relentless work at her fruit plants throughout day and night, involving husband Md Kitab, Ali paid off bigtime.

Having no land for cultivation at the beginning, Lovely now owns 6.5 Bighas of arable land for various fruit plantations, read a press release from the Islami bank.

In 2013, Lovely obtained a membership of the Rural Development Scheme (RDS) of the Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL) and was granted an initial credit of Tk30,000 for fruits plantation at a contractual private land. She started planting Pineapple, Banana, Lemon, Malta, Orange and Papaya.

Her planting turned out to be exceptionally well as the hilly land of Madhupur locality is very fertile. Over the years of rolling the investment in fruit plantation, an irresistible Lovely Begum worked hard at her plants, attained economic capability and paid back instalments to IBBL regularly.

Her aggregate investment reached nearly Tk3 lakh and savings stood around Tk80,000.

Lovely's husband Kitab Ali oversees night time security for the plantation, cares for proper growing of plants, buys and sprays fertilisers and insecticides timely as well as harvests and sells.

In their fruit plantation, they employ more than 20 labourers from the same village. Their Son Nazmul is preparing for Secondary School Certificate examination while daughter Sumaiya Akhter Kona is studying in the first year of Dakhil grade at a Madrassa.

The couple also bought and installed a motor pump for domestic and agricultural use of water and connected their home with an electricity facility from the Rural Electrification Board.

Kitab Ali, riding own motorbike, frequently travelled through plantations and weekly rural markets to sell fruits from the plant's fund to get the best prices.

"I 've struggled a lot and achieved success," said Kitab Ali.

About his husband, Kitab Ali, said, "RDS is my partner in this success."

"I am all joy when I see my plants bear fruits," she said, adding that she is now planning to expand their plantation and keep RDS as a partner.

The Islami bank's press release added that some 17 lakh people across 31,000 villages of the country have enrolled in their microfinance scheme.

Clients who are able to successfully utilise the micro investment slabs can avail larger investments under the micro enterprise scheme, said the release.