IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jintdv/v8y1996i2p153-161.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Addressing some key questions on finance and poverty

Author

Listed:
  • Marguerite S. Robinson

    (Harvard Institute for International Development, Cambridge, MA, USA)

Abstract

Lady Chalker, the United Kingdom's Minister for Overseas Development, raised a number of fundamental questions in her Opening Remarks to the conference on 'Finance Against Poverty'. This paper suggests responses to her questions. Among them: (i) There are available guidelines for institutions providing microfinance, and industry standards are emerging; it is not necessary to await charismatic leaders. (ii) There is a clear role for government in microfinance development that includes both aspects of macroeconomic management and the development of a regulatory framework and system of supervision appropriate for institutions providing commercial microfinance. (iii) Experience demonstrates that institutions providing commercial microfinance can become self-sufficient within 2-3 years. (iv) The interest rates that must be charged on loans if the institution is to become profitable must cover all costs, both financial and non-financial. The working poor can afford these rates which are usually below one-sixth of the rates that the poor typically pay to informal commercial lenders. (v) Subsidized credit is capital constrained and can reach relatively few borrowers, usually the local elites; in contrast commercial microcredit, financed by locally mobilized savings, can attain broad coverage among the working poor. The paper also responds to questions about institutional staffing, the effect of microfinance on the poorest of the poor, the roles of donor agencies and banks, and the social and economic benefits of sustainable microfinance.

Suggested Citation

  • Marguerite S. Robinson, 1996. "Addressing some key questions on finance and poverty," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(2), pages 153-161.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:jintdv:v:8:y:1996:i:2:p:153-161
    DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-1328(199603)8:2<153::AID-JID372>3.0.CO;2-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mathilde Maîtrot & Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, 2017. "Poverty and wellbeing impacts of microfinance: What do we know?," WIDER Working Paper Series 190, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Paul Mosley & June Rock, 2004. "Microfinance, labour markets and poverty in Africa: a study of six institutions," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(3), pages 467-500.
    3. Ekholm, Tommi & Krey, Volker & Pachauri, Shonali & Riahi, Keywan, 2010. "Determinants of household energy consumption in India," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 5696-5707, October.
    4. James C. Brau & Gary M. Woller, 2004. "Microfinance: A Comprehensive Review of the Existing Literature," Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, Pepperdine University, Graziadio School of Business and Management, vol. 9(1), pages 1-28, Spring.
    5. Mosley, Paul & Hulme, David, 1998. "Microenterprise finance: Is there a conflict between growth and poverty alleviation?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 783-790, May.
    6. Mathilde Maîtrot & Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, 2017. "Poverty and wellbeing impacts of microfinance: What do we know?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2017-190, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Sunny Li Sun & Junyon Im, 2015. "Cutting Microfinance Interest Rates: An Opportunity Co–Creation Perspective," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 39(1), pages 101-128, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:jintdv:v:8:y:1996:i:2:p:153-161. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/5102/home .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.