'India Needs Game Changers in Microfinance'
Summary
Nancy Barry is the ex-head of the world Bank's Global Industry Development Group and former President of Women's World Banking. Over the last two years, Barry has built Enterprise Solutions to Poverty (ESP), which engages industry leaders and entrepreneurs in building inclusive growth strategies, both in India and other emerging markets. Forbes magazine has recognised her as one of the world's most powerful women and U.S. News&World Report has dubbed her as one of America's top 20 leaders. Here, Nancy shares her concerns about the evolution of the microfinance industry in India:
The outreach that the Indian microfinance industry has achieved, through both the microfinance institutions (MFIs) and the Bank-Self Help Group (Bank-SHG) linkage model over the last 10 years, is impressive. Today, over 50 million poor women have access to very small loans. I believe this is the main accomplishment of the Indian microfinance sector over the last 10 years.However, there are issues that underly this accomplishment. First, both India and Bangladesh have problems rooted in the near exclusive reliance on group lending. The structures built are yielding tiny loans to millions of poor women and are not being leveraged to provide other financial products that build income and assets.See the full content of this document
Extract
'India Needs Game Changers in Microfinance'
Group lending is very powerful as astartupproduct, particularly for poor women, because it has built into it an empowerment component, a community...
See the full content of this document