|
|
|
|
 |
|
UNITED NATIONS CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT FUND Microfinance |
Issue 3 / May - June 2004 |
|
Links New publications and web sites for your information: The Financial Sector Reform and Strengthening (FIRST) Initiative, established in the Spring of 2002, supports activities and interventions mainly in the public sector, principally by providing technical assistance grants to policy makers and regulatory bodies. Based in London, it also supports private sector activities when organized through recognized institutions, such as stock exchanges, self-regulatory organizations, and industry associations. FIRST's core activities include the provision of advisors to support developing and transition countries in strengthening their financial systems and implementing internationally recognized standards and codes. FIRST is committed to the dissemination of information on best practices and useful tools that relate to financial sector reform and development in low-income and middle-income countries. The Information Exchange (IE) is a web-based portal that provides an online source of public information on the financial sector development activities of the official donor community, and provides links to country and theme-based financial sector information. More information is available at: http://www.firstinitiative.org/ A new resource, the Rural Finance Learning Centre (available at http://www.ruralfinance.org) has been developed by FAO, with technical and financial support from other international organizations such as GTZ, IFAD, World Bank, IDB, CARE International and CGAP. The site presents an easily searchable database of resources to facilitate capacity building and improve financial services in rural areas. In addition to the resource database, a “training gateway” is rapidly expanding to include details of training courses, recommended curricula for trainers, and a series of online, interactive self study lessons. The latest MIX data brief focuses on “Depth of Outreach and Financial Sustainability” by exploring the relationship between deep reaching MFIs and sustainability using the MBB 9 data set for point-in-time analysis. "Deep reaching" MFIs are those that have an average balance per borrower of less than 20% of GNP per capita, in relative terms, or less than $150 USD, in the absolute. From the data, one can take two approaches: one can define the factors driving the sustainability of deep outreach MFIs or look for what distinguishes self-sufficient and non self-sufficient MFIs that reach a "lower end" market. The most notable conclusion was that MFIs with sustainable deep outreach have a much greater number (6 x) the number of borrowers with their services than their non-financially self-sustainable peers. The brief is available at: http://www.microfinancegateway.org/content/article/detail/18340. The independent Commission for Private Sector Development submitted its report to the Secretary-General on unleashing entrepreneurship to contribute to the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by the year 2015. The report calls for specific policy reforms that would help stimulate growth in local business, essential to reducing poverty worldwide. Recognizing the importance of access to long-term capital, the Commission highlighted how small and medium enterprises can be engines of job creation, innovation and entrepreneurship. The report detailed actions to be taken in the public sphere to create an enabling environment for microfinance as well as ways to meaningfully engage and leverage the power of the private sector to contribute to the achievement of the MDGs. The full report is available at: http://www.undp.org/cpsd/. In March 2004, the International Labor Organization (ILO) released Global Employment Trends for Women. The main conclusion of the report is that the global female unemployment rate is significantly higher than the male rate. The regions where the female rates showed the most differentiation with those of men were Latin and America and the Caribbean and the Middle East and North Africa. Though unemployment and labor force participation rates vary by region, in all regions the challenges for young women (under age 24) to find work are steepest. With these numbers, the report estimates that at least 400 million jobs will be needed to satisfy women’s demands for work. The informal sector represents a huge section of the economy in many developing countries; women are much more likely to be employed in this sector which the report refers to as a “necessary survival strategy” that lacks any social safety nets and provides low pay, irregular income, and little to no job security. The full ILO report can be read at: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/stratprod.htm. CGAP’s recent review of Formal Financial Institution (FFI) Participation in Microfinance is available at http://www.microfinancegateway.org/content/article/detail/18154. The review is a useful tool for identifying formal institutions with established microfinance operations and those that have the potential to offer financial services to low-income clients. The review surveyed 227 formal financial institutions (FFIs), ranging from FFIs with established microfinance services to others with potential. CGAP hopes that this list will be a useful tool for industry colleagues to understand which institutions are already serving the microfinance market, and which may be interested in doing so, what works, and where the gaps exist. A shortlist of 30 institutions taken from the larger set of 227, has been developed to highlight the diversity of geography and institutional type. The World Bank’s 2004 report on World Development Indicators (WDI) was released on 24 April 2004. The annual publication illustrated rapid growth in East Asia with over 480 million people lifted out of poverty since 1981. Though this great improvement did help to reduce the global number of those living on less than $1 a day in the twenty-year period from 1981 to 2001, progress has been uneven. In Sub-Saharan Africa, poverty actually rose by five percentage points. The report also highlighted the need for national and donor poverty alleviation strategies to guard against economic shock in addition to the provision of basic services that ensure health, education, nutrition, and low infant mortality rates.
|
