The Global Findex Database 2017
The Global Findex Database 2017

Author: Asli Demirguc-Kunt

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2018-04-19

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1464812683

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In 2011 the World Bank—with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—launched the Global Findex database, the world's most comprehensive data set on how adults save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. Drawing on survey data collected in collaboration with Gallup, Inc., the Global Findex database covers more than 140 economies around the world. The initial survey round was followed by a second one in 2014 and by a third in 2017. Compiled using nationally representative surveys of more than 150,000 adults age 15 and above in over 140 economies, The Global Findex Database 2017: Measuring Financial Inclusion and the Fintech Revolution includes updated indicators on access to and use of formal and informal financial services. It has additional data on the use of financial technology (or fintech), including the use of mobile phones and the Internet to conduct financial transactions. The data reveal opportunities to expand access to financial services among people who do not have an account—the unbanked—as well as to promote greater use of digital financial services among those who do have an account. The Global Findex database has become a mainstay of global efforts to promote financial inclusion. In addition to being widely cited by scholars and development practitioners, Global Findex data are used to track progress toward the World Bank goal of Universal Financial Access by 2020 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The database, the full text of the report, and the underlying country-level data for all figures—along with the questionnaire, the survey methodology, and other relevant materials—are available at www.worldbank.org/globalfindex.

Fighting Poverty with Microcredit
Fighting Poverty with Microcredit

Author: Shahidur R. Khandker

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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With increasing assistance from the World Bank and other donors, microfinance is emerging as an instrument for reducing poverty and improving the poor's access to financial services in low-income countries. Providing the poor with access to financial services is one of many ways to help increase their incomes and productivity. In many countries, however, traditional financial institutions have failed to provide this service. Microcredit and cooperative programs fill this gap. They provide credit through social mechanisms such as group-based lending to reach the poor and other clients, including women, who lack access to formal financial institutions. Their purpose is to help the poor become self-employed and thus escape poverty. This book examines the experiences of the Grameen Bank, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, and the Bangladesh Rural Development Board's Rural Development Project-12 in order to quantify the potential and limitations of microcredit programs as an instrument for reducing poverty and delivering financial services to the poor. A copublication of the World Bank and Oxford University Press.

Grameen Bank
Grameen Bank

Author: Shahidur R. Khandker

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 1995-01-01

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 9780821334638

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World Bank Technical Paper No. 295. The progress made by the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in privatizing state-owned enterprises has created millions of new shareholders. But for the citizenry to buy and sell shares, these countries must develop stock markets and related institutions such as brokerages, clearing and settling organizations, and regulatory agencies. This paper examines the role of capital markets in the new market economies of Central and Eastern Europe and to what extent governments in the region should encourage the development of such markets. The authors address questions of whether the capital markets will serve merely as a forum for trading stocks or become a source of new equity capital to help restructure the enterprises of the region and whether governments should take a hands-off approach by letting the necessary institutions develop as they are needed or should actively create stock exchanges and establish the overall legal and regulatory framework.

Finance Against Poverty: Volume 1
Finance Against Poverty: Volume 1

Author: Hulme David

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-08-12

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1134803842

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In two volumes these books review and expand the theory that poverty in the world's poorest regions could be alleviated by providing small loans to micro-entrepreneurs. Volume 1 provides detailed analysis of this theory and offers policy recommendations for practitioners in this field. Volume 2 presents empirical evidence drawn from comparative experiences in seven developing countries. The work assesses the success of this policy and provides some startling conclusions. This is essential reading for all those interested in development, poverty-reduction, social welfare and finance.

Women And Microcredit In Rural Bangladesh
Women And Microcredit In Rural Bangladesh

Author: Aminur Rahman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-20

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 0429982658

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The Grameen Bank of Bangladesh has been extending small loans to poor borrowers (primarily women) to promote self-employment and income generation since 1976. The apparent success of the Grameen Bank (that is, recruitment of clients, investment of loans, recovery rates on invested loans and profit margins) has made microcredit a new model for poverty alleviation and sustainable development. Anthropological research results on Grameen Bank lending to women presented in this book, however, illuminates the link between the success of the bank and debt-cycling of borrowers. The priority of earning profits to insure institutional economic viability caused Bank employees at the grassroots level to emphasize increasing the number of loans disbursed and loan recovery. By using the joint liability model of lending, the Bank workers and borrowing peers impose intense pressure on clients for timely repayment. Many borrowers maintain their regular payment schedules, but do so through a process of loan recycling (that is, pay off previous loans with new ones) that considerably increases borrower debt liability. The debt burdens on individual households in turn increase tension and anxiety among household members and produce unintended consequences for many clients.This book examines women borrowers' involvement with the microcredit program of the Grameen Bank, and the grassroots lending structure of the bank; it illustrates the implications of Grameen lending for the borrowers, their household members and bank workers. The focus of the study is on the processes of village-level microcredit operation; it addresses the realities of the day-to-day lives of women borrowers and bank workers and explains informant strategies for involving themselves in this microcredit scheme. The study is on the power dynamics of everyday lives of informants as they affect women borrowers' relationships within the household and the loan centers, and bank worker relationships within the loan center and the bank.

Microfinance and Its Discontents
Microfinance and Its Discontents

Author: Lamia Karim

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0816670943

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The first feminist critique of the much-lauded microcredit process in Bangladesh.