This week, the Reserve Bank of India (India’s central banking regulator) proposed significant new microfinance regulations which would impact the majority of microfinance lending in India. There are many new regulation recommendations which they hope to have adopted as early as April 1, 2011. Here are a few highlights: Create a new non-banking financial company… Continue reading India Regulator Proposes Radical Microfinance Reforms
Muhammad Yunus’ OpEd piece in Friday’s New York Times entitled Sacrificing Microcredit for Megaprofits is plainly and simply factually challenged. Yunus advocates for changes which will result in fewer of the working poor receiving quality financial services and those who do will pay more for those services. [NOTE: Those of you who read my blog… Continue reading Disinformation on Microfinance Hurts the Poor
Good video explainer and analysis on the microcredit crisis in the state of Andra Pradesh in India. I recommend if you’d like to get a good overview of the history and situation. A Ujjivan client is highlighted in the first and second video. Ujjivan is one of the most socially responsible and professionally run… Continue reading India microcredit crisis analysis
Finally a reporter who actually attempts to explain the objective facts on the current microfinance crisis in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Microfinance by the Numbers by Eric Bellman Here are a few highlights: Default rates by borrowers were ~2% before the politicians intervened and now have risen to 50% since they instructed borrowers… Continue reading India microfinance crisis by the numbers
CGAP (part of The World Bank) has recently produced an analysis of SKS Microfinance IPO in India. This is the first IPO of an Indian MFI. The IPO was 13 times oversubscribed … that is, cialis 13 times more demand than availability of IPO shares. SKS priced at the high end of their range with… Continue reading SKS Microfinance IPO Report
Vikram Akula, Founder and Chairman of SKS Microfinance of India and Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank of Bangladesk, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and author meet for an interview at Clinton Global Initiative this week. I met Vikram in Hyderabad back in 2005 just as they were transforming from a non-profit to a commercial entity… Continue reading SKS and Grameen Bank Founders meet up
In a recent article titled, Power to the People, The Economist provided a helpful round-up of some of the latest energy innovations targeting the 1.5B people who have unreliable or intermittent access to electricity and other modern energy sources. I’ll use the short-hand term “energy outsiders” to refer to this group. Here are a few… Continue reading Micro-energy innovations
A new report highlighted by The Economist, reports that 3 out of 10 new workers in the next decade will be in India. That’s right, India. Not China. By 2020, India will add 110M new workers. A few stats on India’s worker landscape: Expect that about 1/3 of those people will work in the services… Continue reading India — the world’s big new workforce
I wish I had posted this closer to the announcement date, but I still think this will be helpful for people who care deeply about Unitus and microfinance/poverty alleviation… I am a board member of Unitus, a global poverty 501c3 charity which recently announced that it is redirecting its efforts from microfinance to new areas of reducing global… Continue reading Questions about Unitus changes
Researchers at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at the University of Oxford have created a new way of measuring poverty which takes into account more factors than income. Called the “Multidimensional Poverty Index”, it includes factors such as: Does a family have a dirt or dung floor? Do they have a decent toilet/latrine?… Continue reading A better measure of global poverty?
Defeat Poverty 