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Tuesday, April 23, 2024
News and Views from the Global South
Credible Future - Can Micro Loans Make a Macro Difference?
MICROFINANCE GROWS UP
The original Microcredit Summit was held in 1997. When delegates gathered nine years later at the Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax, Canada in 2006, it had just been announced that Muhammad Yunus would share the Nobel Peace Prize with Grameen Bank, the institution he founded decades before. A year earlier, the United Nations had celebrated the Year of Microcredit, and just one year later, the Microcredit Summit Campaign surpassed its goal set in 1997 of reaching 100 million of the world?s poorest families with credit for self employment and other financial and business services. Those were indeed heady times for microfinance.CUBA: More and More Women in the Fields
When Sara Gutiérrez began working her land, she knew a lot about hairdressing, her first profession, but nothing about agricultural techniques. "The first crops were really bad, until I learned how to get good yields even in difficult conditions," she said.CENTRAL AMERICA: Beating Mega Challenges with Microloans
Pilar Toc, a 45-year-old Quiche Maya woman, used to work endlessly in a factory making traditional clothing in northwest Guatemala. Even so, her situation was so precarious that she could not enrol her son in school. But her life changed when she took out a microloan from a community bank.
INDIA: Microcredit Fights to Regain Credibility
As microcredit institutions - once touted as the vital ‘last mile' in extending credit to poor rural women -fight a government backlash that has encouraged honest borrowers to turn defaulters, hopes for revival hinge on a new bill awaiting passage in India's parliament.ARGENTINA: Boosting Agribusiness – and Family Farms
A plan to boost agribusiness, but based mainly on family farming and cooperatives, in Argentina is geared to producing and exporting more food – in a more sustainable manner.CUBA: Self-Employment Expanding, But Not Enough
This month, the Cuban government eased up on taxes and other legal aspects involved in self-employment. But experts warn that there are serious limitations standing in the way of growth of private enterprise, which is supposed to absorb hundreds of thousands of employees slashed from the public workforce.
SRI LANKA: Single Women Begin to Rebuild
For Magei Kasai the battle against hardships did not end when the guns fell silent two years ago in the Sri Lankan civil war. New battles began for survival, for herself and for what was left of her family.Accessible Micro-Loans Help Poor Women in Rural South Africa
While women still lag grossly behind men in terms of bringing home the bacon, a new entrepreneurship organisation, Financial Independence Through Entrepreneurship (FITE), is working to swing the balance of economic power in South Africa by providing micro-loans to hard-up women.GUATEMALA: All Candidates Jump on the Social Programmes Bandwagon
Although he is accused by the opposition of failing to live up to his promises of transparency, job creation and security, Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom has received praise from all sides for his government's successful social programmes.
COLOMBIA: Microcredit Growing Steadily at 15 Percent a Year
The more than 1.2 million microenterprises operating in Colombia are responsible for around 50 percent of all employment. And many of these small businesses owe their existence to the microfinance system, according to a report by Visión Económica, a local business research group.
Q&A: ‘Cooperatives Aren’t Charity’
As industrial production penetrates all corners of the planet and transnational capital gains have unfettered access to virtually every country and community, the United Nations has declared 2012 to be the ‘International Year of Cooperatives (IYC)'.
GHANA: Guidelines for Unregulated Microfinance Sector
When Andrew Poku's mother passed away he needed help to pay for her funeral. So the 35-year-old teacher from Accra turned to one of the country's several loan companies for a 670-dollar loan.
CUBA: Dreams and Progress in a Rural Community
The day that electricity arrived in the Cuban village of Jova, there were shouts, laughter and tears of joy, even among the most incredulous, who had doubted it was possible. "I didn’t know what to do; it actually made me nervous," Carmen Carvallosa confessed.Development NGOs Face “Existential Challenge”
Buy now, pay later. That's the power Muhammad Yunus gave to the world's poor.MEXICO: Microloans from Distant Lands a Mouse Click Away
Norma Isela from the city of Piedras Negras in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila needs 500 dollars to expand the merchandise inventory in her business selling shoes by catalogue and to broaden her offer of clothes and accessories. So far she has managed to raise 45 percent of that amount.ARGENTINA: Worker Cooperatives Reduce “Hard-Core” Unemployment
During the social and economic collapse of 2002-2003, the Argentine state encouraged the formation of workers' cooperatives, which helped mitigate the worst effects of the crisis, reduced hard-core unemployment, and now as independent, democratic, worker-controlled organisations are providing services to the public and private sectors.
Bangladesh Offers Lessons in Microcredit Management
Phulo Rani Pal checks for loose dust around her open backyard kitchen. It’s time to prepare the sweets she supplies to vendors and it will not do for her products to be contaminated.
BANGLADESH: Women Raise Own Funds for Microfinance
Amidst despair and poverty, women in some remote villages of Bangladesh are raising money and lending it to each other through a unique microfinance programme launched by a local non-government organisation.From One Computer to Biggest Microfinance Bank in Bolivia
A non-governmental organisation set up by five women 25 years ago in Bolivia gave birth to what is now the largest microcredit bank in the country, catering to those otherwise marginalised from the financial system.CUBA: Microcredit Knocks on Door…Softly
A microcredit system could begin operating in Cuba as part of reforms adopted by the government of Raúl Castro to modernise the country's socialist economic system.
“Microfinance Can Help Rural Communities Adapt to Climate Change”
Projects to fight climate change are being designed all around the world. But only five percent of them can be financed with the current international funds available, which means resources have to be used more wisely. Microfinance could be one solution.« Previous Page — Next Page »
Thousands of microfinance institutions serve tens of millions of the world's poor, through massive operations in rural South Asia to fledgling enterprises in West African towns. This small-scale loan movement aimed at alleviating poverty can offer life-changing potential for people who would otherwise find it difficult to obtain loans from the traditional banking sector. But microcredit is not a miracle solution to ending global poverty. If high interest rates prevail, putting recipients at risk of repeat borrowing and cycles of debt, microfinance can also have unintended consequences. IPS tracks the spread of microcredit and its impact across the global South.
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IPS gratefully acknowledges the support of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AECID) and the Microcredit Summit Campaign
