In the hilly town of Jinotepe, Nicaragua, Nelson Zuniga Lopez tends to his 60,000 orange, lemon, mango, guava and cocoa trees on his one acre plot of land. At the front of his plant nursery are several large tanks of exotic fish, which he sells to malls in the country. \u00a0Today, Nelson is happy that his business is steadily growing, but it wasn\u2019t so long ago when he struggled to expand his business.<\/p>\n
As a small business owner, Nelson had difficulty getting loans from big, commercial banks. \u201cThe big banks don\u2019t serve people like me,<\/em>\u201d he says.\u00a0 When Nelson tried to get a loan for purchasing a truck, he was turned away.<\/p>\n Less than a year ago, Nelson was able to get a $3,000 loan from FINCA. Now on his second loan of $10,000, Nelson uses the credit to purchase soil, fertilizer and insecticide. In addition, the loans help to pay for the salaries of his employees.<\/p>\n \u201cThanks to FINCA for being so helpful and nice,\u201d Nelson says. \u201cFINCA has really helped me a lot.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the hilly town of Jinotepe, Nicaragua, Nelson Zuniga Lopez tends to his 60,000 orange, lemon, mango, guava and cocoa trees on his one acre plot of land. Today, Nelson is happy that his business is steadily growing, but it wasn\u2019t so long ago when he struggled to expand his business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40794,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories-en-ca"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n