(FORTUNE Magazine) – Here's a lesson for Citicorp, Manufacturers Hanover, Chase Manhattan, and all the big lenders, including governments, that may well be worried about their $1.2 trillion in loans to the Third World. Some 40 U.S. nonprofit groups have been lending money to people like Sara Garcia of Lima, Peru, and getting it all back -- including full monthly interest payments at rates of up to 37% -- almost always bang on time. Since 1984, Garcia has borrowed a total of $1,845. She invested the money in sewing machines and silk-screening equipment to produce the patterned handkerchiefs she used to make by hand. She has hired two extra workers, and her husband and three of her five children pitch in. Garcia has seen her output grow from 20 pieces per day to 500. Because the amounts are tiny, businesses like Garcia's are called ''microenterprises.'' But in many countries, even a fraction of her borrowed $1,845 is enough to launch an entrepreneur. Accion International, for example, a U.S. group that makes such loans, divided $14.4 million among 27,000 Latin American borrowers last year, for an average of $535 each. Accion has been doing this for 16 years, and Gabriela Romanow, the group's education director, says the loan default rate is less than 2%. Local Accion affiliates screen and counsel borrowers like Garcia, and work closely with them to help develop the nascent businesses. The interest helps fund future loans. Says Henry Jackelen, a senior adviser at the United Nations Capital Development Fund: ''The poor have shown that, contrary to long-held perceptions among lenders, they will pay the real cost of capital.''