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IDB Offers $25 Million Loan to Raise Farmer?s Productivity in Peru
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) recently offered a $25 million loan to increase productivity and exports of farmers in Peru. The program will directly benefit about 14,000 producers participating in the Program of Compensation for Competitiveness, over the next four years, of which an estimated 42 percent are women. The program aims to raise farmers’ productivity by 10 percent and increase the value of their products in domestic and foreign markets by 20 percent by the end...
- Region
- Latin America
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ACCION Brings Microfinance to Manaus, Brazil
ACCION International inaugurated on Tuesday a new microfinance institution, ACCION Microfinancas in Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas in Brazil’s northern region which is a largely underserved microfinance market. ACCION Microfinancas, which launched unofficially when it began lending operations on February 1st of this year, has Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) among its co-investors....
- Region
- Latin America
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Former U-M Students Help Honduran Farming Community Make Coffee More ’Local’
After several service trips to the mountainous villages of La Union, Honduras, former University of Michigan student Andrew Boyd was inspired. He wanted to do more, but wasn’t sure how he could make an impact. His passion led to a microfinance organization that focused on something the people of La Union already knew - coffee. And now thanks to his efforts, the Honduran farming community gets a rebirth, and Ann Arbor is d...
- Region
- Latin America
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Brazil Launches Drive to Lift 16 Mln from Poverty
BRASILIA, June 2 (Reuters) - President Dilma Rousseff launched an ambitious plan on Thursday to eliminate dire poverty in Brazil within four years by lifting more than 16 million people from conditions of "misery." The "Brazil Without Misery" program is the signature policy of the former leftist guerrilla’s first term, her advisers said, fulfilling one of the key promises she made in her campaign for ...
- Region
- Latin America
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Major Microlaboratory Against Poverty
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 31, 2011 (IPS) - Microcredit in Brazil still has huge potential for expansion, even though microloans have already grown much more than traditional credit in the last eight years. Microcredit has formed a successful part of anti-poverty programmes since left-wing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in January 2003 and immediately launched the National Productive Microcredit Programme, targeting low-income households. ...
- Region
- Latin America
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IDB Creates SME Lending Facility
The Inter-American Development Bank has set up a $100 million facility to strengthen lending to small and medium-sized enterprises in Latin America and the Caribbean. In a May 19 press release, IDB called its SME Financing Facility as the first of its kind. The facility will channel resources through financial institutions in IDB borrowi...
- Region
- Latin America
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MIF invests $3 MN in Columbian Fondo de Capital Privado Inversor
The Multilateral Investment fund (MIF) is investing $3 million in the Fondo de Capital Privado Inversor, a venture capital (VC) fund investing in companies with scalable business models that cater to the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) population in Colombia. The fund involves support from 10 founding institutions representing people from the social and financial sector,...
- Region
- Latin America
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Empowering Women With Microfinance: From Oxford, England to Lima, Peru
One week ago, I was on stage for the opening plenary of the Skoll World Forum in the scholarly, well-ordered university town of Oxford, England. Today, I am in the ramshackle home of an able, but very poor, businesswoman in the impoverished, raggedy outskirts of Lima, Peru. The connection? The Skoll World Forum is the preeminent global gathering of social entrepreneurs. Over 1,200 of the smartest, most...
- Region
- Latin America