IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jintdv/v8y1996i2p271-288.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ownership and sustainability: Lessons on group-based financial services from South Asia

Author

Listed:
  • Lynn Bennett

    (Human Resources Division, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., USA)

  • Mike Goldberg

    (Human Resources Division, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., USA)

  • Pamela Hunte

    (Human Resources Division, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., USA)

Abstract

This study of rural group-based financial service projects of five NGOs in South Asia illustrates a great degree of variation between the different systems in structure, function and success rates. In the area of accessibility, all five systems have been quite successful in reaching the rural poor-especially non-literate women. However, results concerning financial sustainability of the groups are not so clear cut. The two systems in which the NGO helped groups to form their own parallel financial institution (e.g. a co-operative or village bank) achieved financial sustainability than those systems where the NGO linked groups with existing local financial institutions. But the main factor behind the success of parallel systems the central concept of client ownership. This has resulted in high degrees of loan recovery due to the fact that all or most of the loan funds are internally generated and therefore owned by the group members rather than externally obtained from donors. In addition, social intermediation in the sense of investment in capacity building at the group level (management, accounting, etc.) is a crucial step towards sustainability. Despite the importance of achieving sustainability, the authors conclude that subsidies do have a role to play-especially in harsh socio-economic environments where costs are necessarily high. However, subsidies should be utilized to develop group members' abilities to assume the responsibilities of ownership-rather supporting a welfare approach.

Suggested Citation

  • Lynn Bennett & Mike Goldberg & Pamela Hunte, 1996. "Ownership and sustainability: Lessons on group-based financial services from South Asia," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(2), pages 271-288.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:jintdv:v:8:y:1996:i:2:p:271-288
    DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-1328(199603)8:2<271::AID-JID375>3.0.CO;2-Z
    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. Sophie King, 2014. "Cultivating political capabilities among Ugandan smallholders: good governance or popular organisation building?," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 19314, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    2. Aliber, Michael., 2002. "Informal finance in the informal economy : promoting decent work among the working poor," ILO Working Papers 993576903402676, International Labour Organization.
    3. Lynn Bennett & Carlos E. Cuevas, 1996. "Sustainable banking with the poor," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(2), pages 145-152.
    4. Katsushi S. Imai & Raghav Gaiha, 2014. "Dynamic and Long-term Linkages among Growth, Inequality and Poverty in Developing Countries," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1410, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    5. Ana MARR & Janina LEON & Fatima PONCE, 2014. "Financial Inclusion of the Poor in Peru: Explanatory factors and determinants," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 14(1), pages 101-122.
    6. Jain, Sanjay & Mansuri, Ghazala, 2003. "A little at a time: the use of regularly scheduled repayments in microfinance programs," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 253-279, October.
    7. Jones, Gareth A. & Dallimore, Anthea, 2009. "Wither participatory banking?: experiences with village banks in South Africa," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 23354, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Nayma Qayum & Mrinmoy Samadder & Rehnuma Rahman, 2012. "Group Norms and the BRAC Village Organization – Enhancing Social Capital Baseline," Working Papers id:4984, eSocialSciences.
    9. Debadutta Kumar Panda, 2017. "Impact assessment of group-based credit–lending projects with controlled project placement bias and self-selection bias," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 44(3), pages 227-238, September.
    10. Thorp, Rosemary & Stewart, Frances & Heyer, Amrik, 2005. "When and how far is group formation a route out of chronic poverty?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 907-920, June.
    11. Edwards, Michael, 1999. "NGO Performance - What Breeds Success? New Evidence from South Asia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 361-374, February.
    12. Hari Bansha Dulal & Chris D Gingrich & Roger R Stough, 2008. "Do Microfinance Programmes Really Serve the Poor? Evidence from Rural Southeast Nepal," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 3(2), pages 253-268, October.
    13. repec:ilo:ilowps:357690 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Panda, Debadutta Kumar & Atibuddi, Hrudananda, 2010. "Impact of Group-Based Microfinance on Rural Household Income: Evidence from an Indian State," Journal of Rural Cooperation, Hebrew University, Center for Agricultural Economic Research, vol. 38(2), pages 1-14.

    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:271-288. 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.