OSCUS is the name of the credit institute that we’re working at, the second row means something like: “Cooperative for Savings and Loans”. I intend to give a more proper introduction to OSCUS, and their business idea, in a later post. For the time being I’ll only mention that they work like most other banks except that they also give out micro-credit (small loans) to poor people who often wouldn’t be considered credit-worthy by ordinary banks.
OSCUS in Ambato holds about 90 employees and the first day we got introduced to the head of human resources who more or less asked us what we wanted to do at the office and what our expectations was. We answered that we first and foremost are here to learn about their business and what they are doing. After that the four of us split up in pairs of two and got introduced to different parts of the company everyday.
The first day, Monday, Oscar and me got in a jeep, with one of the employees, and headed out to the mountainous countryside tracking down people who were late with their monthly down-payments. The procedure was the following: We had about 25 notifications for people who we’re late with their payments, with claims reaching from 19USD to 250USD. It was either their first, second or third reminder (third being the last, if they couldn’t pay we tracked down the person who guaranteed the loan). The clients who get these microcredit’s are often very poor and most often don't have a post address, which means that they can’t receive notifications by mail. Thus, finding them is sort of detective work and demands EXCELLENT local knowledge about surroundings. An example of an “address” could be: “Ambato, village of xxx, north up the road towards the chapel, left by the mill, continue 200m and it’s the blue house on the left side of the road”. When eventually finding the client, the employee often does a bit of chitchat, asking them how everything is going, while handing over the notification. In this way OSCUS creates a local knowledge and a presence and respect with locals; giving them soft incentives to pay on time in the future.
An indian lady paying off a part of her microcredit by the side of our car.
Oscar tries to act professional in the front seat.
Wednesday and Thursday more or less repeated the first two days, with some differences. We went along with employees saying hello and chitchatting with clients in the center of Ambato and on the country side. One example of a client we visited was a family who were lending money to build a huge pool with some sort of elevating wheel so that they could process and bleach the cotton they we producing. By selling it refined on the market they could earn much more than if they sold it raw. It was awesome listening (being translated) to their ideas and thoughts about how they intended to carry it out. We also got a feel for their political and ideological views by asking a lot of questions. The views were, not unexpectedly, leaning towards socialism. (I’m just starting to get a feel for how the Ecuadorians reason when it comes to ideological issues. They are quite different from ours and to categorize them in the traditional way as socialistic, liberal conservative, left, right etc. isn’t really fair. I hope to be able to develop these thoughts in a later post. That is if I ever understand it.) Anyways, it was great and afterwards they treated us with an awesome feast of meat, different kinds of maíz, fried platanos and home made liqueur made from sugar canes. Best meal so far.
Friday afternoon, Oscar and me attended a course hosted by OSCUS (free of charge for the participants), which was to introduce poor farmers and city folks – mostly indigenous Indians – to basic business economic thinking. It was incredible to hear how the participants reasoned and how little they understood about how to handle any kind of business activity and how the market works. – even though farming is the only thing they’ve been doing their entire life. For example the lecturer tried to explain to them the foundation of supply and demand; that they all shouldn’t grow and sell potatoes, because if they did the price of potatoes will decrease and they will loose more than they earn. This was totally new information and they all looked puzzled and confused to what he was saying. Also many of them had a hard time reading and writing, and spoke poor Spanish.
At the beginning the tone in the class was calm and barely no-one spoke up. However towards the end loud and meaningless discussions about the right price of cows and different vegetables broke out when the lecturer wanted to make simple examples. I might be pessimistic but I didn’t get the feeling that the people embraced what the lecturer wanted to communicate, and it reinforced my notion of Ecuador being a laggard nation (in the sense of business activity). Nevertheless, I reckon it’s a good initiative from OSCUS, trying to increase awareness about the essentials of how to start and run a business. And I hope my notion to be proven wrong in the future when Ecuador and its farming starts utilizing its great potential and catching up with the rest of the world…
It should be noted that I, off course, didn’t understand a word of what was said at the course; the entire rendering above comes from Oscar translating. Hence, I disclaim all responsibility of politically incorrect statements – in this and in all subsequent posts.
After the last post Oscar wondered if something was wrong since it apparently was a bit grumpy and pessimistic. This was absolutely not my intention! However, while reading through this post I can’t say that my tone has improved. I’ll see if I can cheer it up henceforth. Other from that I can briefly mention that all is good. I’m having a great time, enjoying both the country and the company of the four gringos I’m living with.
We’ve been doing some excursions lately, I’ll see if I can get around writing about them as well, not just economic mumbo-jumbo that only turns me on…
I also got around uploading some pictures: Downtown Ambato and 1st week in Ambato.
