micro credit

MicrocreditFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is specific to small loans, often provided in a pooled manner.[1]

For direct payments to individuals for specific projects, see Micropatronage.For financial services to the poor, see Microfinance. For small payments, seeMicropayment.

Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to impoverishedborrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credithistory. It is designed not only to support entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty,but also in many cases to empower women and uplift entire communities byextension. In many communities, women lack the highly stable employmenthistories that traditional lenders tend to require. Many are illiterate, and thereforeunable to complete paperwork required to get conventional loans. As of 2009 anestimated 74 million men and women held microloans that totalled US$38billion.[2] Grameen Bank reports that repayment success rates are between 95 and98 percent.[3]

Microcredit is part of microfinance, which provides a wider range of financialservices, especially savings accounts, to the poor. Modern microcredit is generallyconsidered to have originated with the Grameen Bank founded in Bangladesh in1983.[4] Many traditional banks subsequently introduced microcredit despiteinitial misgivings. The United Nations declared 2005 the International Year ofMicrocredit. As of 2012, microcredit is widely used in developing countries and ispresented as having "enormous potential as a tool for poverty alleviation."[5]

Critics argue, however, that microcredit has not had a positive impact on genderrelationships, does not alleviate poverty, has led many borrowers into a debt trapand constitutes a "privatization of welfare".[6] The first randomized evaluation ofmicrocredit, conducted by Esther Duflo and others, showed mixed results: therewas no effect on household expenditure, gender equity, education or health, butthe number of new businesses increased by one third compared to a controlgroup.[7] Professor Dean Karlan from Yale University says that whilst microcreditgenerates benefits it isn't the panacea that it has been purported to be. Headvocates also giving the poor access to savings accounts.[8]

Contents

1 History1.1 Early Beginnings

Microcredit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcredit

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1.2 Modern microcredit2 Principles

2.1 Economic principles2.2 Group lending2.3 Lending to women

3 Examples3.1 Bangladesh3.2 Venezuela3.3 Peer-to-peer lending over the Web

4 Impact of microcredit5 Improvement6 See also7 References8 Bibliography9 External links

History

Early Beginnings

Ideas relating to microcredit can be found at various times in modern history.Jonathan Swift inspired the Irish Loan Funds of the 18th and 19th centuries.[9] Inthe mid-19th century, Individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner wrote about thebenefits of numerous small loans for entrepreneurial activities to the poor as away to alleviate poverty.[10] At about the same time, but independently to Spooner,Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen founded the first cooperative lending banks tosupport farmers in rural Germany.[11] In the 1950s, Akhtar Hameed Khan begandistributing group-oriented credit in East Pakistan. Khan used the Comilla Model,in which credit is distributed through community-based initiatives.[4] The projectfailed due to the over-involvement of the Pakistani government, and thehierarchies created within communities as certain members began to exert morecontrol over loans than others.[4]

Modern microcredit

The origins of microcredit in its current practical incarnation can be linked toseveral organizations founded in Bangladesh, especially the Grameen Bank. TheGrameen Bank, which is generally considered the first modern microcreditinstitution, was founded in 1983 by Muhammad Yunus.[4] Yunus began the projectin a small town called Jobra, using his own money to deliver small loans atlow-interest rates to the rural poor. Grameen Bank was followed by organizationssuch as BRAC in 1972 and ASA in 1978.[12] Microcredit reached Latin America


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Nobel laureateMuhammad Yunus,the founder ofGrameen Bank, whichis generallyconsidered the firstmodern microcreditinstitution.

with the establishment of PRODEM in Bolivia in 1986; abank that later transformed into the for-profitBancoSol.[13] Microcredit quickly became a popular toolfor economic development, with hundreds of institutionsemerging throughout the third world.[4] Though theGrameen Bank was formed initially as a non-profitorganization dependent upon government subsidies, itlater became a corporate entity and was renamedGrameen II in 2002.[12] Muhammad Yunus was awardedthe Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work providingmicrocredit services to the poor.[14]

Principles

Economic principles

Microcredit organizations were initially created asalternatives to the "loan-sharks" known to take advantageof clients.[4] Indeed, many microlenders began asnon-profit organizations and operated with governmentfunds or private subsidies. By the 1980s, however the"financial systems approach," influenced by neoliberalism and propagated by theHarvard Institute for International Development, became the dominant ideologyamong microcredit organizations. The commercialization of microcredit officiallybegan in 1984 with the formation of Unit Desa (BRI-UD) within the Bank RakyatIndonesia. Unit Desa offered ‘kupedes’ microloans based on market interest rates.

Many microcredit organizations now function as independent banks. This has ledto their charging higher interest rates on loans and placing more emphasis onsavings programs.[4] Notably, Unit Desa has charged in excess of 20 per cent onsmall business loans.[15] The application of neoliberal economics to microcredithas generated much debate among scholars and development practitioners, withsome claiming that microcredit bank directors, such as Muhammad Yunus, applythe practices of loan sharks for their personal enrichment.[12] Indeed, theacademic debate foreshadowed a Wall-street style scandal involving the Mexicanmicrocredit organization Compartamos.[4]

Even so, the numbers indicate that ethical microlending and investor profit can gohand-in-hand. In the 1990s a rural finance minister in Indonesia showed how UnitDesa could lower its rates by about 8% while still bringing attractive returns toinvestors.[15]

Group lending


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Microfinance meeting inTzaneen, South Africa.Group-lending is a key partof microcredit.

Though lending to groups has long been a key partof microcredit, microcredit initially began with theprinciple of lending to individuals.[12] Despite theuse of solidarity circles in 1970s Jobra, GrameenBank and other early microcredit institutionsinitially focused on individual lending.[13] (Asolidarity circle is a group of borrowers thatprovide mutual encouragement, information, andassistance in times of need, though loans remainthe responsibility of individuals.[16][17]) Indeed,Muhammad Yunus propagated the notion thatevery person has the potential to become anentrepreneur. The use of group-lending wasmotivated by economics of scale, as the costsassociated with monitoring loans and enforcing

repayment are significantly lower when credit is distributed to groups rather thanindividuals.[13] Many times the loan to one participant in group-lending dependsupon the successful repayment from another member, thus transferringrepayment responsibility off of microcredit institutions to loan recipients.[13]

Lending to women

Lending to women has become an important principle in microcredit, with banksand NGOs such as BancoSol, WWB, and Pro Mujer catering to womenexclusively.[13] Pro Mujer also implemented a new strategy to combinemicrocredits with health-care services, since the health of their clients is crucial tothe success of microcredits.[18] Though Grameen Bank initially tried to lend toboth men and women at equal rates, women presently make up ninety-five percentof the bank’s clients. Women continue to make up seventy-five percent of allmicrocredit recipients worldwide.[13] Exclusive lending to women began in the1980s when Grameen Bank found that women have higher repayment rates, andtend to accept smaller loans than men. Subsequently, many microcreditinstitutions have used the goal of empowering women to justify theirdisproportionate loans to women.[4]

Examples

Bangladesh

Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is the oldest and probably best-known microfinanceinstitution in the world. In India, the National Bank for Agriculture and RuralDevelopment (NABARD) finances more than 500 banks that on-lend funds toself-help groups (SHGs). SHGs comprise twenty or fewer members, of whom the


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Mumbai Headquarters ofthe National Bank forAgriculture and RuralDevelopment of India, whichon-lends funds to banksproviding microcredit.

majority are women from the poorest castes andtribes. Members save small amounts of money, aslittle as a few rupees a month in a group fund.Members may borrow from the group fund for avariety of purposes ranging from householdemergencies to school fees. As SHGs prove capableof managing their funds well, they may borrowfrom a local bank to invest in small business orfarm activities. Banks typically lend up to fourrupees for every rupee in the group fund. In Asiaborrowers generally pay interest rates that rangefrom 30% to 70% without commission and fees.[19]

Nearly 1.4 million SHGs comprising approximately20 million women now borrow from banks, whichmakes the Indian SHG-Bank Linkage model thelargest microfinance program in the world. Similarprograms are evolving in Africa and Southeast Asiawith the assistance of organizations like IFAD, Opportunity International, CatholicRelief Services, Compassion International, CARE, APMAS, Oxfam, Tearfund andWorld Vision.

Grameen Bank launched their US operations in New York in April 2008.[20] Bankof America has announced plans to award more than $3.7 million in grants tononprofits to use in backing microloan programs.[21] The Accion U.S. Network, theUS subsidiary of the better-known Accion International, has provided over $450million in microloans since 1991, with an over 90% repayment rate.[22] Oneresearch study of the Grameen model shows that poorer individuals are saferborrowers because they place more value on the relationship with the bank.[23]

Even so, efforts to replicate Grameen-style solidarity lending in developedcountries have generally not succeeded. For example, the Calmeadow Foundationtested an analogous peer-lending model in three locations in Canada during the1990s. It concluded that a variety of factors — including difficulties in reachingthe target market, the high risk profile of clients, their general distaste for thejoint liability requirement, and high overhead costs — made solidarity lendingunviable without subsidies.[24] Microcredits have also been introduced inIsrael,[25] Russia, Ukraine and other nations where micro-loans help smallbusiness entrepreneurs overcome cultural barriers in the mainstream businesssociety. The Israel Free Loan Association (IFLA) has lent more than $100 million inthe past two decades to Israeli citizens of all backgrounds.[26]

Venezuela

In Venezuela, businessman Victor Vargas, owner of Banco Occidental deDescuento (BOD), established a microcredit program tied with entrepreneurship


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education. Vargas and BOD set up a network of entrepreneur schools throughoutVenezuela. Aspiring entrepreneurs attend a three month program. If theygraduate, they are given a line of credit in the form of a micro-loan from Vargas'sBOD. In 2015 alone, 20,000 Venezuelans graduated from the program andreceived microcredit opportunities.[27]

Peer-to-peer lending over the Web

The principles of microcredit have also been applied in attempting to addressseveral non-poverty-related issues. Among these, multiple Internet-basedorganizations have developed platforms that facilitate a modified form ofpeer-to-peer lending where a loan is not made in the form of a single, direct loan,but as the aggregation of a number of smaller loans—often at a negligible interestrate.

Examples of platforms that connect lenders to micro-entrepreneurs via Internetare Kiva, Zidisha, and the Microloan Foundation. Another WWW-basedmicrolender, United Prosperity, uses a variation on the usual microlending model;with United Prosperity the micro-lender provides a guarantee to a local bankwhich then lends back double that amount to the micro-entrepreneur. UnitedProsperity claims this provides both greater leverage and allows the micro-entrepreneur to develop a credit history with their local bank for future loans. In2009, the US-based nonprofit Zidisha became the first peer-to-peer microlendingplatform to link lenders and borrowers directly across international borderswithout local intermediaries.[28] Vittana allows peer-to-peer lending for studentloans in developing countries.[29]

Impact of microcredit

For more details on this topic, see Impact of microcredit.

The impact of microcredit is a subject of much controversy. Proponents state thatit reduces poverty through higher employment and higher incomes. This isexpected to lead to improved nutrition and improved education of the borrowers'children. Some argue that microcredit empowers women. In the US, UK andCanada, it is argued that microcredit helps recipients to graduate from welfareprograms.

Critics say that microcredit has not increased incomes, but has driven poorhouseholds into a debt trap, in some cases even leading to suicide. They add thatthe money from loans is often used for durable consumer goods or consumptioninstead of being used for productive investments, that it fails to empower women,and that it has not improved health or education.

The available evidence indicates that in many cases microcredit has facilitated the


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Many microfinanceinstitutions also offersavings facilities, such asBanco Palma in Brazil shownhere.

creation and the growth of businesses. It has often generated self-employment,but it has not necessarily increased incomes after interest payments. In somecases it has driven borrowers into debt traps. There is no evidence thatmicrocredit has empowered women. In short, microcredit has achieved much lessthan what its proponents said it would achieve, but its negative impacts have notbeen as drastic as some critics have argued. Microcredit is just one factorinfluencing the success of a small businesses, whose success is influenced to amuch larger extent by how much an economy or a particular market grows.

Improvement

Many scholars and practitioners suggest anintegrated package of services ('a credit-plus'approach) rather than just providing credits. Whenaccess to credit is combined with savings facilities,non-productive loan facilities, insurance, enterprisedevelopment (production-oriented andmanagement training, marketing support) andwelfare-related services (literacy and healthservices, gender and social awareness training),the adverse effects discussed above can bediminished.[30] Some argue that more experiencedentrepreneurs who are getting loans should bequalified for bigger loans to ensure the success ofthe program.[31]

One of the principal challenges of microcredit is providing small loans at anaffordable cost. The global average interest and fee rate is estimated at 37%, withrates reaching as high as 70% in some markets.[32] The reason for the highinterest rates is not primarily cost of capital. Indeed, the local microfinanceorganizations that receive zero-interest loan capital from the online microlendingplatform Kiva charge average interest and fee rates of 35.21%.[33] Rather, theprincipal reason for the high cost of microcredit loans is the high transaction costof traditional microfinance operations relative to loan size.[34] Microcreditpractitioners have long argued that such high interest rates are simplyunavoidable. The result is that the traditional approach to microcredit has madeonly limited progress in resolving the problem it purports to address: that theworld's poorest people pay the world's highest cost for small business growthcapital. The high costs of traditional microcredit loans limit their effectiveness asa poverty-fighting tool. Borrowers who do not manage to earn a rate of return atleast equal to the interest rate may actually end up poorer as a result of acceptingthe loans.[35] According to a recent survey of microfinance borrowers in Ghanapublished by the Center for Financial Inclusion, more than one-third of borrowerssurveyed reported struggling to repay their loans.[36] In recent years, microcredit


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providers have shifted their focus from the objective of increasing the volume oflending capital available, to address the challenge of providing microfinance loansmore affordably. Analyst David Roodman contends that in mature markets, theaverage interest and fee rates charged by microfinance institutions tend to fallover time.[37]

See also

Cooperative bankingCount Me In (charity)CrowdfundingCrowd sourcingFlat rate (finance)Microcredit for water supply and sanitationMicrograntM-PesaProject EnterpriseSolidarity lendingThe Women's Development BankOikocredit

References

P2P lending vs microcredit (http://www.cgdev.org/blog/kiva-not-quite-what-it-seems)1. Microfinance Information Exchange, Inc. (2009-12-01). "MicroBanking Bulletin Issue#19, December, 2009, pp. 49". Microfinance Information Exchange, Inc.

2.

Grammen Bank report (http://www.grameenfoundation.org/what-we-do/microfinance-basics)

3.

Bateman, Milford (2010). Why Doesn't Microfinance Work?. Zed Books.4. Jason Cons and Kasia Paprocki of the Goldin Institute, "The Limits of Microcredit—ABangladeshi Case" (http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2351), Food FirstBackgrounder (Institute for Food and Development Policy), Winter 2008, volume 14,number 4.

5.

Gina Neff:Microcredit, microresults (http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Micro.html) The Left Business Observer #74, October 1996

6.

Banerjee, Abhijit; Esther Duflo; Rachel Glennester; Cynthia Kinnan. "The miracle ofmicrofinance? Evidence from a randomized evaluation". Retrieved 17 April 2012.

7.

BBC:Business Weekly (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003s71s), 2 August 20098. Aidan Hollis (University of Calgary); Arthur Sweetman (University of Victoria)(March 1997). "Complementarity, Competition and Institutional Development: TheIrish Loan Funds through Three Centuries" (PDF). Retrieved 30 January 2012.

9.

Spooner, Lysander (1846). "Poverty: Its illegal causes and legal cure.". Boston.Retrieved 30 January 2012.

10.

Deutscher Raiffeisenverband:The Raiffeisen organization: Beginnings, tasks, currentdevelopments (http://www.raiffeisen.de/genossenschaften/genossenschaften/pdf/Raiffeisen-Organisation-englisch.pdf), March 2011

11.

Drake, Deborah (2002). The Commercialization of Microfinance. Kumarian.12.


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Armendariz, Beatriz (2005). The Economics of Microfinance. Cambridge, Mass: TheMIT Press.

13.

Nobel Prize.org:The Nobel Peace Prize 2006:Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank(http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/), retrieved on 13February 2012

14.

gdrc.org (http://www.gdrc.org/icm/country/unit-desa.html)15. http://www.peopleweaver.com/projects/MicroCredit/meetings/solidarity_circle/16. http://www.zawadisha.org/explore.html17. Microfinance - Healthy Clients http://www.dandc.eu/en/article/pro-mujer-why-microfinance-institutions-should-offer-healthcare-services-too

18.

Nimal A. Fernando:Understanding and Dealing with High Interest Rate onMicrocredit (http://www.adb.org/documents/books/interest-rates-microcredit/microcredit-understanding-dealing.pdf), Asian Development Bank, May 2006, p. 1

19.

University of Michigan, Urban and Regional Planning Economic DevelopmentHandbook: Microcredit strategies for assisting neighborhood businesses(http://www.umich.edu/~econdev/microcredit/), 22 March 2005, retrieved on 13February 2012

20.

"Bank of America Issues Grants for Microloans". Wall Street Journal. October 6,2010. Retrieved 30 January 2012.

21.

http://www.accion.org/our-impact/us-network22. Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, The Creditworthiness of the Poor: A Model ofthe Grameen Bank, April 2010 (http://www.kansascityfed.org/PUBLICAT/RESWKPAP/PDF/rwp10-11.pdf)

23.

Cheryl Frankiewicz. "Calmeadow Metrofund: A Canadian Experiment in SustainableMicrofinance", Calmeadow Foundation, April 2001.

24.

Svivatomehet.org.il (http://www.svivatomehet.org.il) (Hebrew)25. Israel Free Loan Associantion, History of IFLA, http://israelfreeloan.org.il/about/history, July 26, 2013

26.

"Teaching entrepreneurship: Venezuela’s BOD backs micro-business funding". WorldFinance. 24 August 2015. Retrieved 14 October 2015.

27.

"Zidisha Set to "Expand" in Peer-to-Peer Microfinance", Microfinance Focus, Feb2010 (http://www.microfinancefocus.com/news/2010/02/07/zidisha-set-to-expand-in-peer-to-peer-microfinance-julia-kurnia/)

28.

Rao. L. (2010). Vittana Applies The Kiva Model To Help Finance Education InDeveloping Countries. Retrieved March 9, 2011, from http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/15/vittana-applies-the-kiva-model-to-help-finance-education-in-developing-countries/

29.

Holvoet, Nathalie. "The Impact of Microfinance on Decision-Making Agency:Evidence from South India".

30.

Goetz; Gupta (1996). World Development (PDF). Who takes the credit?Gender, Power,Control over loan use in Rural credit program in Bangladesh 24 (1)http://www.citt.ufl.edu/portfolio/genders/Readings/ReadingsW10/Whotakesthecredit.pdf. Missing or empty |title= (help)

31.

McFarquhar, Neil (April 13, 2010). "Banks Making Big Profits From Tiny Loans".New York Times.

32.

"Kiva Help - Interest Rate Comparison". Kiva.org. Retrieved October 10, 2009.33. http://www.kiva.org/about/microfinance#interestRatesAreHigh34. http://www.quora.com/Microfinance/Do-the-micro-loans-contribute-to-the-well-being-of-the-people-or-do-they-leave-them-even-poorer-due-to-high-interest-rates

35.

http://centerforfinancialinclusionblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/111108_cfi_over-36.


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indebtedness-in-ghana_jessica-schicks_en_final.pdfRoodman, David. "Due Diligence: An Impertinent Inquiry Into Microfinance." Centerfor Global Development, 2011.

37.

Bibliography

Following is a selected bibliography about microcredit.

Adams, Dale, Doug Graham and J.D. Von Pischke (eds.). Undermining RuralDevelopment with Cheap Credit. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1984.Bateman, Milford. 'Why Doesn't Microfinance Work? The Destructive Rise ofLocal Neoliberalism'. Zed Books, London, 2010.Drake, Deborah, and Elizabeth Rhyne (eds.). The Commercialization ofMicrofinance: Balancing Business and Development. Kumarian Press, 2002.Rhyne, Elizabeth. Mainstreaming Microfinance: How Lending to the PoorBegan, Grew and Came of Age in Bolivia. Kumarian Press, 2001.Fuglesang, Andreas and Dale Chandler. Participation as Process – Process asGrowth – What We can Learn from the Grameen Bank. Grameen Trust,Dhaka, 1993.Gibbons, David. The Grameen Reader. Grameen Bank, Dhaka, 1992.Harper, Malcolm and Shailendra Vyakarnam. Rural Enterprise: Case Studiesfrom Developing Countries. ITDG Publishing, 1988.Hulme, David and Paul Mosley. Finance Against Poverty. Routledge, London,1996.Johnson, Susan and Ben Rogaly. Microfinance and Poverty Reduction. Oxfam,Oxford UK, 1997.Kadaras, James & Elizabeth Rhyne. Characteristics of equity investment inmicrofinance. Accion International, 2004.Khandker, Shahidur R. Fighting Poverty with Microcredit. Bangladeshedition, The University Press Ltd, Dhaka, 1999.Ledgerwood, Joanna. Microfinance Handbook. Washington, D.C., World Bank,1998.Rutherford, Stuart. ASA: The Biography of an NGO, Empowerment and Creditin Rural Bangladesh. ASA, Dhaka, 1995.Small Enterprise Development. Intermediate Technology Publications,London.Todd, Helen Women at the Center: Grameen Borrowers After One Decade.University Press Ltd, Dhaka, 1996.Wood, Geoff D. & I. Sharif (eds.). Who Needs Credit? Poverty and Finance inBangladesh. University Press Ltd., Dhaka, 1997.Yunus Muhammad, Moingeon Bertrand & Laurence Lehmann-Ortega,"Building Social Business Models: Lessons from the Grameen Experience”,April-June, vol 43, n° 2-3, Long Range Planning, 2010, p. 308-325(http://www.loancalculatorcanada.ca/Article-LRP-Yunus-Moingeon-Lehmann-Ortega-definitif.pdf)"


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Yunus, Muhammad. Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle AgainstWorld Poverty. Public Affairs, 2003.Padmanabahn, K.P., Rural Credit, Intermediate Tech. Publ. Ltd., London1988.Germidis D. et al.,Financial Systems and Development: what role for theformal and informal financial sectors?, OECD, Paris 1991.Robinson, Marguerite S., The microfinance revolution, The World Bank,Washington D.C., 2001.Mauri, Arnaldo, (1995): A new approach to institutional lending and loanadministration in rural areas of LDCs, International Review of Economics,ISSN 1865-1704, Vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 707–716.Goetz, A.-M., and R. Sengupta. 1996. Who Takes the Credit? Gender, Powerand Control over Loan Use in Rural Credit Programmes in Bangladesh. WorldDevelopment 24:45–63.Johnson, S. 1997. Gender and Micro-finance: guidelines for best practice.Action Aid-UK.Kabeer, N. 1998. 'Money Can't Buy Me Love'? Re-evaluating Gender, Creditand Empowerment in Rural Bangladesh. IDS Discussion Paper 363.Mayoux, L. 1998a. Women's Empowerment and Micro-finance programmes:Approaches, Evidence and Ways Forward. The Open University WorkingPaper No 41.Rahman, A. (1999). “Micro-credit Initiatives for Equitable and SustainableDevelopment: Who Pays?” World Development 27(1): 67–82.CHESTON, S. and KUHN, L. (2002). Empowering Women throughMicrofinance. Pathways Out of Poverty: Innovations in Microfinance for thePoorest Families.Harper, A. ( 1995). Providing women in Baltistan with access to loans –potential and problems. Lahore, AKRSP Pakistan.Mutalima, I. K., 2006, Microfinance and Gender Equality: Are We GettingThere? (http://www.microcreditsummit.org/papers/Workshops/28_Mutalima.pdf): Micro Credit Summit, Halifa, Royal Tropical Institute andOxfam Novib.

External links

What is Microcredit (http://www.grameen-info.org/what-is-microcredit/)Latest Findings from Randomized Evaluations of Microfinance(http://www.povertyactionlab.org/publication/latest-findings-randomized-evaluations-microfinance) Access to Finance Forum by CGAP and Its PartnersNo. 2, December 2011Building a Microfinance Institution from Scratch (http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/sudan/ss_microfinance.html) Institution'sobjective is to offer financial services on a self-sustaining yet efficient basis tomicroentrepreneurs.Journal of Microfinance (http://www.lib.byu.edu/spc/microfinance/), a forumfor practitioners in microfinance and microenterprise development to


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exchange information and ideasOmidyar-Tufts Microfinance Fund (http://www.tufts.edu/microfinancefund/), apartnership between Pierre Omidyar and Tufts University."Microfinance in the U.S." (http://thehague.usembassy.gov/mrs._arnall_microfinance) Helping ensure egalitarian access to neededfinancial services.The Promise of Microfinance for Poverty Relief in the Developing World(http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/microfinance/review.php)Microcredit Regulatory Authority, MRA (http://www.mra.gov.bd/) The centralbody to monitor and supervise microfinance operation of NGOs ofBangladeshAlleviation and poverty and enpowerment of the poor, BRAC(http://www.brac.net/) BangladeshThe European Union Project "Credit Cooperatives – Russian Federation"(http://www.credit-coops.ru) official web siteSmall Fortunes: Microcredit and the Future of Poverty (http://www.kbyutv.org/smallfortunes/) web site for a PBS documentaryFaculty of Political Sciences, University of Granada, Spain. (http://www.ugr.es/~pwlac/G24_44Tony_NageraDeSousa_Peixera.html)

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