Zareena Malik Bashir Ahmad Group

Zareena baji is the 45-year-old wife of Malik Bashir Ahmad, and she resides in the city of Mumtazabad, which is famous for its holy places. In fact, she has lived in Mumtazabad for her entire life. She has one son, Javed, who completed his education through the 10th standard. Now, Javed works as a salesman in a vegetable market. Zareena baji’s husband is a driver by profession: he drives trucks loaded with various goods. More specifically, he delivers different items (such as vegetables and fruits) to different cities, and he has been in this business for the past 10 years.

Meanwhile, Zareena baji has a clothes-selling business, which she has operated for the past 7 years. Indeed, she collects clothes from the famous cloth markets of Lahore (“Ichra Bazaar and Anarkali”) and sells such clothes in her community for a profit. On average, she sells 15 suits per week, and she earns $8 to $10 by doing so. Notably, she has already successfully repaid two prior loans from Asasah, a microfinance institution of Pakistan. She is now applying for another loan to expand her clothes-selling business.

She is joined in her loan group by four other members: Shamim baji seeks a loan to buy groceries for her grocery shop; Maqsoodan baji requests a loan to buy bed sheets to resell; Hakim baji is in need of a loan to buy vehicle wheels to resell; and Saima baji would like a loan to repair her auto-rickshaw (a local three-wheeled motor vehicle). In this way, this is a group loan; as such, the loan proceeds will be distributed amongst the group members, each of whom will invest in her own business. Importantly, the group members mutually guarantee one another's loans; as a result, if one group member does not repay her portion of the loan, then the other members are responsible for curing the arrears.



About Group Loans
In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a group of individuals bound by a group guarantee. Under this arrangement, each member of the group supports one another and is responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members if someone is delinquent or defaults. Learn more

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