Status Update - May 25, 2011
 
Kiva has received a full repayment for Al Thiqa’s outstanding balance of $87,175.
 
Ordinarily, funds are paid back to lenders only when the repayments come in from the appropriate borrowers.  In this case though, every time funds are transferred out of Iraq, Al Thiqa is now being charged a large fee.  As a result, Al Thiqa would suffer a significant financial burden if they processed and wired repayments each month as they came in from borrowers.
 
To address this, Al Thiqa has requested that they be allowed to repay Kiva lenders in one large payment, ahead of the borrower repayment schedules.  This would allow them to pay the fund transfer fee only once, saving the organization a significant amount of money.  Ordinarily, Kiva is reluctant to break the financial connection between borrowers and lenders.  In this case though, Kiva has agreed to do so in order to mitigate a heavy financial burden on a fellow non-profit organization.
 
The $87,175 in repaid funds will be immediately applied to corresponding lender accounts, and full repayment on all loans will be made ahead of schedule.
 
Status Update - April 26, 2011:

Al Thiqa has been a partner of Kiva's for seventeen months, successfully paying back over $133,000 in loans since the partnership began in October of 2009.  Al Thiqa has contacted Kiva to request a pause in posting new profiles to the Kiva website.  Because of this, no new profiles have been uploaded to Kiva from Al Thiqa since March 17, 2011.

There are $87,175 in current outstanding loans; as repayments come in from these borrowers, those funds will be paid back to lenders.

We remain committed to potentially re-opening the fundraising partnership in the future, and will keep this page updated with further updates as information becomes available.


Partner Description:

Al-Thiqa, meaning Trust in Arabic, is an independent nonprofit Iraqi nongovernmental Organization (NGO) engaged in lending to micro and small enterprises and low-income households in northern and central Iraq. Founded in 2004 by ACDI/VOCA, a U.S. NGO and registered with Iraq’s NGO Assistance Office, Al-Thiqa has been an independent organization from its very start. Today Al-Thiqa is the largest Iraqi NGO engaged in lending activities.

Al-Thiqa’s mission is to participate in rebuilding Iraq’s economy by providing transparent financial services to micro and small enterprises and low-income households in Iraq.

Al-Thiqa offers individual and solidarity group loans, conventional and Islamic, for working capital and small investments in established and new businesses, loans to taxi operators for parts and maintenance, agricultural loans for crop production, animal husbandry and food processing and housing loans for home renovation and improvements.

Al-Thiqa is a member of the Iraq Microfinance Network and an affiliate member of Sanabel Microfinance Network of Arab Countries. Al-Thiqa received a 4-diamond certificate of transparency 2007 from the Microfinance Information Exchange for the disclosure of its financial performance in FY2007. In 2009 Al-Thiqa received a certificate of the Microfinance Institution of the Year from the USAID Provincial Economic Growth program in Iraq for achieving the highest international recognition for financial transparency and accountability during the period April 1, 2008 – March 2009.