Microfinance

Recent global financial recession has badly hit the global economy and impacted the industries, investors, financial institutions, including the banks. This has categorically shifted the focus from hitherto capital-intensive to more decentralized and low capital-based investment priorities directed towards developing small and micro-enterprises with microfinance options. Graduating from the original Grameen Bank Model of Professor Yunus of Bangladesh, past two decades have witnessed a meteoric rise and mushroom growth of innovative microfinance delivery models, together with the diverse role played by microfinance institutions to cater to critical financial services. The socio-economic impacts, measured in qualitative and quantitative terms, have been quite commendable and convincing for reassuring future investments. The roles played by the poor sections of the society, particularly the farm women, in the microfinance programme for improving their economy have been widely acknowledged and admired. Government’s special role and responsibility for ensuring proper execution, monitoring, evaluation, regulation, and good governance is being increasingly realized the world over. The roles being played by lead NGOs and International Donor Agencies are also noteworthy in these endeavours.
Microfinance is a highly researched area of development finance, and yet the success stories and several challenges confronted by the implementing agencies as well as beneficiaries/stakeholders are not properly documented. This has been the compulsion and motivation behind writing this book.
The book, Microfinance written at this critical juncture, covers wide-ranging themes—extending from the concept, achievements, and emerging issues—in implementation and institutional governance, innovations in the development of microfinance delivery models, and enlarged role of Microfinance Institutions in mobilizing financial resources for funding micro-enterprises. It showcases some representative research-based analyses of the impact of microfinance on socio-economic development in a global perspective with due emphasis on the entrepreneurship and micro-enterprise development. The book also addresses the emerging issues of gender sensitivity in microfinance development programmes and broadly covers the regulatory dimensions and the governance aspects of microfinance.