These four institutions combined have over USD800 million in outstanding loans and around USD380 million in savings (Zaman, 2004). The Grameen Bank was started as a majority government-owned bank established under a special Grameen Bank Act and has different status vis-a-vis the government that can help the bank in case of unpredictable liquidity crunch due, for example, to floods. Other microfmance institutions were set up under the Societies Act without government participation and most depend to some degree on grants or low-cost funds from international donors (Hoek-Smit, 1998).