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White House: U.S. to Support $10 Million in Loans to Myanmar Small Businesses
At the invitation of President Barack Obama, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counsellor of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, is on an official visit to Washington, D.C. in September 2016. During the visit, State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President Obama held a meeting on September 14 in the White House and adopted this joint statement.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- lending
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One Solution to Keeping India’s Girls in School: Cheap Maxi Pads
In many stores across India, shopkeepers wrap maxi pads in black polythene. If they don’t have that, the products go in a small carton or brown paper bag. Absent those, “we try hiding it while walking down the road because of how people would react," says Khushboo Navani, a 23-year-old woman who lives in Bikaner. "People give you weird looks," she adds.
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- Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
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The One-Rupee Trick: How Banks Cut Their Zero-Balance Jan Dhan Accounts
In August 2014, a few weeks after the launch of Jan Dhan, the government’s flagship scheme under which the unbanked get bank accounts, Kamlesh, a housewife at Purnapur village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly, opened an account at the Punjab and Sind Bank’s local branch. Wife of a farmer, the opening balance in her account was zero. This wasn’t unusual — in fact, accounts like Kamlesh’s, called zero-balance accounts, made up almost half of all the 17.90 crore Jan Dhan accounts a year later given that most of the holders were poor and had little by way of savings.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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India’s Microfinance Industry Clocked 60% Growth in Fiscal 2016
After years of subdued growth, the Indian microfinance (MFI) industry expanded more than 60% to Rs54,329 crore in 2015-16 compared to the previous year, according to a report prepared by Sa-Dhan, the self regulatory organisation of MFIs.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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WHO Asks India to Engage Private Healthcare Sector to Tackle Dengue and Chikungunya
The WHO called for strengthening India's disease surveillance network by engaging private healthcare sector more for reliable counts of cases of dengue and chikungunya, which have claimed over 80 lives and affected more than 50,000 people across the country. Terming engagement with private healthcare sector as "critical", WHO said that even probable dengue cases during outbreaks need to be reported to get more effective estimates while noting that strong surveillance, vector control, early diagnosis and case management and public awareness are key to control these vector-borne diseases.
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- Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
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Global Healthcare Companies Seek to Bet on Indian Startups for Fresh Start
Last year when global oncology leader Roche signed a $550-million deal to team up with Curadev, a tiny Noidabased firm set up by two seasoned researchers, it didn't really make the headlines. Yet the deal, cherry-picked by a global scouting team of the Swiss biotech giant, resonated with other innovation-based drug makers and medical device leaders such as Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Philips and Medtronic.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
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Why TPG’s Rise Fund could redefine impact investing
The New York Times (NYT) reported on Monday citing unnamed sources that TPG Growth is setting up a social impact fund. It is dubbed the Rise Fund and aims to invest more than $1 billion over time.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- South Asia
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Australian Social Enterprise Lights Up India’s Slums
Pollinate Energy was founded by six young Australians in 2012, following a blackout in India that left more than 600 million people without power.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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