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Microfinance Under Fire
By DAVID BORNSTEIN At Fixes, our focus is typically on implementing new or underutilized ideas to help those in need. But sometimes it’s just as important to protect institutions that are already working well. Which is why I’m writing today about the Grameen Bank, the Bangladeshi organization that won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, along with its founder Muhammad...
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- South Asia
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Accion, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation Invest In Social BPO Firm
Bangalore-based BPO Vindhya e-Infomedia (Vindhya), which employs people who are differently-abled, has raised an undisclosed amount of venture funding from social sector investors Accion International and Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. Vindhya provides data management and processing services to clients in the IT and microfinance space. Accion is making the investment through Frontier Investments Group, an early-stage equity fund that invests in breakthrough technologies and disrup...
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- South Asia
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Tata Motors Developing Cheaper Trucks
MUMBAI - Tata Motors Ltd. is developing cheaper versions of its Prima range of trucks and plans to start launching them by the end of 2011 to boost demand, a senior company executive said recently. The new trucks will be sold at price points up to 400,000 rupees ($8863.3) lower than those of the current range, the executive told Dow Jones Newswires. "We are currently working on cutting costs th...
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- South Asia
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Lack of Funding Still Plagues India Microlenders
Six months after the state of Andhra Pradesh slapped restrictive laws on India’s microlenders, availability of funding continues to plague the once-thriving lenders to the poor despite official encouragement. Confidence building is needed to revive financing for microfinance operations, said Mathew Titus, executive director of Sa-Dhan, an industry body. "You need somebody to step up and say the industry is fine," Titus said on the sidelines of a conference organised by Sa-Dhan...
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- South Asia
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IFC Invests in New Microfinance Bank to Help Pakistan?s Farmers Get Loans
Islamabad, Pakistan. IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is improving access to finance for Pakistan’s farmers by investing to transform microcredit operations of the National Rural Support Program-one of the country’s leading microfinance institutions-into a regulated, deposit-taking microfinance bank. IFC will...
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- South Asia
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Microcredit: Prevent it from Collapse
Noted economists and analysts yesterday urged the critics of microcredit, including the government, not to underrate the contribution of microfinance institutions that help lift millions out of poverty. Their calls came from a roundtable discussion on microcredit and poverty alleviation, organised by the country’s most-circulated national daily Prothom Alo at its office in Dhaka. The sector that lends funds to more than two crore families across the country has been passing th...
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- South Asia
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Banks Say Inclusiveness Is Costly
The Reserve Bank of India may want all banks to focus on financial inclusion-service the poor at the bottom of the pyramid-but is it a viable business? "It’s not really profitable to have people in financial inclusion," admitted Neeraj Swaroop, regional chief executive India and South Asia, Standard Chartered Bank. "A lot of the accounts are dormant and not activated because there’s no credit as those people are really poor," he added. "You can’t have financial inclusi...
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- South Asia
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U. Project Hopes to Buy Cows for Cambodia
SALT LAKE CITY - What do University of Utah students, cows and Cambodia have in common? They are linked through a project to help people rise out of poverty. "We have some very dedicated students who have educated themselves on microcredit, its potential, the impact it can have on lives," said economics professor Wade Roberts. Members of his international economics class want to take an idea - microcredit - halfway around the world. They have only seen video or pictures of the pov...
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- South Asia