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Deutsche Bank increases funding to microentrepreneurs
A $75m global consortium led by Deutsche Bank, and featuring Standard Life and the Cooperative Bank, is one of the strongest signals yet that, as the United Nation’s 2005 ’year of micro-credit’ ends, bottom-up funding for micro-businesses in the world’s poorest countries could be a new financial market. The consortium, working with the US International Development agency, is the first fund of its kind to tap a wide range of western institutional investors for tiny loans to e...
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BON REPOS, Haiti -- Every morning, Nicolas Jean rises before dawn to milk his cow on his scruffy sliver of land. Then he pours the milk into plastic jugs, saddles up his horse and trots 2 1/2 hours along bumpy back roads to deliver the precious white liquid to a project that inspires hope for Haiti’s shattered economy. Jean’s destination is a microplant for L?t Agogo (Haitian Creole for Milk Galore), a franchise that makes yogurt and milk drinks. Launch...
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Government Brings PCs to Poor
Excerpts: Plans by governments to help make PCs cheaper for their citizens can help drive market penetration around the globe, but community-shared computers may be best for the world?s poorest regions, analysts said Wednesday. A recent Gartner report said that thanks in part to affordability programs, PC installations in emerging markets could reach 1.1 billion by 2015, representing an increase of 850 million, or 327 percent, from 260 million in 2005. That would mean market penetra...
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Channeling the Remittance Flood
Excerpts: In 2005, migrant workers in the U.S. sent $52 billion back to Latin America and the Caribbean. Now governments are working to leverage that money to promote economic development. The importance of the inflows cannot be exaggerated. Remittances to El Salvador account for 18% of gross domestic product and lately have exceeded the value of the country’s exports. Throughout Latin America, the remittances reach poor rural areas that get little development assista...
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BASIX, a new generation rural livelihood promotion institution, has come out with two new products for the self-help groups (SHGs). One of the products is micro-credit plus capacity building product and the other a health insurance product.? The products were launched at the national conference on ?Emerging opportunities at the bottom of the pyramid ? Transforming the Indian rural economy through profitability?. ? The micro-credit product involves a loan of up to Rs one lak...
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CHENNAI, DEC 23: With a view to focusing on innovation and product development, some academicians, industrialists and associations have come together to form Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), India. The association, which is claimed to be a non-profit organisation, is going to be affiliated to PDMA, US. President, PDMA, US, Hamsa Thota, said the mission of PDMA India was to improve the capabilities of people engaged in the design and development of new products ...
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More retailers pursuing markets at the BOP
HYDERABAD/MUMBAI: Call it a mall revolution for the masses. If an idea currently being toyed by retail giants fructifies, India?s huge middle- and lower-class population will have something to cheer. And why not? If retail stores start selling TV sets at Rs 40 per week or, for that matter, kitchen mixers at Rs 10 a week, the hoi polloi are going to be the ultimate beneficiary. For large retailers, catering to the tastes of 45- 60% of a 1.2-billion consumer market makes sou...
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