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Now 47, Jos? Antonio Reyes has worked for years as a builder in his native El Salvador and has never once thought about opening a bank account. On the face of it, he and his wife Edith Portales seem like some of the most unlikely people to have their lives transformed by innovations in trans-national finance. The couple live in a cramped and airless house in Soyapango, near the country’s capital, San Salvador, which they share with their son Fernando and their nephew Gerardo Alfar...
Building FuturesNews
A typical bank will do its very best to retain customers who are relatively mature and reliable. Whenever it deals with these favoured clients, it will try to offer a personalised service, devise innovative products and keep rival lenders away. The World Bank is certainly not a typical bank, but in this respect it follows the norm. It relishes dealing with its ?best? customers: the middle-income countries (MICs), a group whose GDP per head typically ranges from about $1,000 to $6,0...
The World Bank, founded to fight poverty, is searching for the right role in places that need its heNews
High levies on mobile phones, hiked to 10 percent from 2.5 percent, could put a dampener on telecom expansion in Sri Lanka, currently growing at a rate of over 15 percent. The Lankan telecom sector is set to enter more exciting times with Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Airtel, an Indian company, being awarded licences to provide 2G and 3G mobile services in the country. Airtel plans to invest $200 million in Sri Lanka over the next five years. Industry analysts forecast a thinning of prof...
High Levies May Dampen Mobile Growth in Sri LankaNews
Empowering consumers with ready credit is how Kishore Biyani, CEO of the Future Group, expects to build his retail business. On the last day of the India Retail Forum, Biyani, elaborated on the future of retailing in the session on ?Future Yet to Unfold?. Mumbai: Empowering consumers with ready credit is how Kishore Biyani, CEO of the Future Group, expects to build his retail business. On the last day of the India Retail Forum, Biyani, elaborated on the future of retailing in the session on ?Fut...
Empowering Consumers with Ready Credit will Fuel RetailNews
The Agricultural Bank of China’s showcase microfinance project -- its only such project -- is based in a small but tidy office in a dry mountain region in the country’s far west. Founded in the early 1990s with Australian development money, the program -- which doles out small loans of less than $250 each -- is directed at three of the poorest counties in China. It has been a boon to local farmers who have used the money to buy chickens and seeds, and? even open small stores that sell...
Can Rural Finance Take Root in China? About 750 Million People Hope SoNews
India’s desire to become the world’s next big economic power is as real as the enormous challenges it faces in raising the social and economic well being of its rural populations. According to Abraham George, founder of The George Foundation, an NGO focused on poverty alleviation in South India, The issue of adequate housing is integral to poverty reduction and social justice in India. In this opinion piece, George describes the living conditions of the rural poor and argues ...
India’s Rural Poor: Why Housing Isn’t Enough to Create Sustainable CommunitiesNews
Taxes are necessary. The consistent theme of the ’Choices’ columns has been that choices have to be made; that one cannot have the cake and eat it too. Sept 03, 2007 (LBO) - Taxes are necessary. The consistent theme of the ’Choices’ columns has been that choices have to be made; that one cannot have the cake and eat it too. Taxes or inflation The present administration got elected by promising to fight a war, give government employment to all gra...
Taxing Sri Lanka’s Mobile Customers; Goose or Eggs?News
Por filantrop?a pura o como oportunidad de negocio, en el sector privado colombiano toma auge la Responsabilidad Social Empresarial. El sector privado tambi?n se mete la mano al bolsillo, aunque no en la misma medida que los empresarios de pa?ses vecinos. Probablemente el tema con mayor auge medi?tico en el escenario actual de la lucha contra la pobreza en Colombia sea el de la Responsabilidad Social Empresarial, por la cual se entiende la inversi?n que las empresas privadas realizan en favor de...
La mano al bolsillo
