Posts Tagged ‘credit’
Posted on November 18, 2008 - by James
Reuters: Global Credit Crisis Hurts MiFi in South Asia…
MUMBAI (Reuters) - A global credit crisis that has felled large investment banks and prompted multi-billion dollar bailout packages is also hurting unlikely victims half a world away: small south Asian businesses dependent on microfinance.
Microfinance has helped poor women and farmers in Bangladesh and India set up businesses and grow crops since the 1970s.
But as credit tightens and largesse from corporations and socially-minded investors dries up, microfinance will be hit, impacting poor people who have no other access to finance… [click here to read the rest of this article...]
Posted on November 4, 2008 - by James
MFIs face challenge of global meltdown
HYDERABAD: Financing FOR the poor is getting more frugal now with microfinance institutions facing the heat of the global financial meltdown. There has been a virtual halt in fresh disbursements to MFIs by banks and financial institutions coupled with over 200 basis points hike in interest rate. It does not end at credit squeeze alone. Banks are also asking for personal guarantees of directors of MFIs… [click here to read the rest of this article...]
Posted on October 29, 2008 - by lincolnw
Global Economy Tests African Microcredit Channels
Amid growing signs that the global economy is worsening, the White House yesterday extended an invitation to developing countries to attend a summit next month in Washington with leaders of the world’s wealthy economies.Faced with rising food and fuel prices, some of Africa’s poorest nations are struggling to lower earlier projections of economic growth by focusing on how to satisfy the basic day-to-day needs of their citizens. One avenue for attracting investment needed to keep capital flowing in to local African businesses and public works is the practice of microfinance, or supplying credit to the poor at agreed-to, flexible rates which they can afford to pay back in an acceptable time frame.But the director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Sam Daley-Harris says that tightening pressures are being felt even in low-end borrowing circles and that such small but essential programs that can make a difference for Africans facing dire poverty are also feeling the effects of the global financial pinch…{click this link to read the rest of the article}
Posted on October 27, 2008 - by lincolnw
Schwab Charitable Reports Increased Granting Despite Credit Crisis
SAN FRANCISCO (Business Wire EON/PRWEB ) October 21, 2008 — Schwab Charitable, one of the country’s largest and fastest growing national donor-advised funds with 12,000 donors and nearly $2 billion in assets, announced today that grants to charities during the third quarter of 2008 were up 12 percent from 2007 levels. The increased giving, which comes as turmoil on Wall Street has cut contributions to nonprofits nationwide, demonstrates one of the most compelling features of donor-advised funds—namely their capacity to pool charitable assets and create “charitable reserves” that can be tapped during economic downturns.
“During good times, our donors have set aside significant charitable dollars, and now are able to tap those funds when they are needed most,” said Schwab Charitable President Kim Wright-Violich. “It demonstrates how donor-advised funds can help people go beyond ‘checkbook charity’ and become more strategic citizen philanthropists.”{Click this link to read the rest of the article}
Posted on October 21, 2008 - by James
Muhammad Yunus on the Financial Crisis…
A Nobel Prize-winning academic turned micro-finance banker for the poor has important advice for Washington. Muhammad Yunus believes that the government bailout of the banking system is but the first step in redesigning the global credit system. In the end, Yunus believes that a new self-correcting market system will have to be created.
In 1983, Muhammad Yunus set up the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and ushered in the era of micro-finance andsocial entrepreneurship. By offering tiny amounts of credit to poor people, mostly women, to finance small businesses, he contradicted the established banking norms of the day. As a consequence, he received an unrelenting barrage of criticism from bankers and economists… [click here to read the rest of this article...]
