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Inter-American Development Bank Grants Colombia $450 Million USD Loan for Financial System Reforms
According to the IDB, the proposed reforms will aim to solidify macroeconomic stability, boost development, encourage public/private partnership financing, strengthen regulation of the financial system, promote financial inclusion, and heighten the country’s ability to monitor progress in these areas.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Latin America
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Why Alternative Lending Struggles to Scale in Emerging Markets – And What Fintech Companies Can Do About It
Fintech models have proliferated in most developing countries, but alternative lending has struggled to gain scale. That's why FIBR, a project by consulting firm BFA in partnership with The MasterCard Foundation, is bringing together fintechs and banks to use networks of small businesses – shops, clinics and even local schools – to deliver digital financial services to low-income customers.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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UN Study: Digitization of Kenyan Farmer Payments Helps Tackle Poverty
One Acre Fund, supported by Citi, enabled farmers to easily make loan repayments via mobile money instead of cash, reducing the uncertainty, inefficiency, insecurity and high costs previously caused by cash transactions.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Digital Toolkit to Give Tanzania Smallholder Farmers Access to Finance, Farm Supplies and Training
The digital toolkit will allow farmers to gradually pre-pay for the inputs they need via mobile money, at discounted prices. It will also provide them with a customized inputs package based on their crop and production goals, and deliver mobile-phone based farming advice to ensure the best use of those inputs.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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‘Like Using a Wall to Stop a Runaway Bus’: Cambodian Microcredit is Overheated, But Rate Caps Aren’t the Answer
Daniel Rozas says a proposed interest rate cap of 18 percent on most new microloans in Cambodia will, if enforced, hurt the very people it ostensibly seeks to protect. Taking issue with a recent post by Milford Bateman, Rozas argues the cap would create a clear preference for certain types of lending and could heighten problems created by Cambodia's saturated microcredit market.
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- Uncategorized
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Don’t Fear the Rate Cap: Why Cambodia’s Microcredit Regulations Aren’t Such a Bad Thing
The Cambodian government recently shocked its microcredit industry by capping interest rates at 18 percent – about half the current rate of most loans. Many analysts sympathetic to the industry have strongly criticized the move, but Milford Bateman argues it's actually an important step in protecting the poor – and resolving an "existential crisis" in a sector plagued by unsustainable growth and high over-indebtedness.
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- Uncategorized
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Follow the Money: The IT Hurdles of Microlending
When the crowdfunding non-profit Kiva.org launched a pilot in 2014 to streamline their transactions in Kenya, they met local shop owners like Esther, who was running a stall called “Facebook Cereals.” Kenya had suffered political unrest in recent years, and Esther had to restart her business in the Toi Market of Nairobi twice. But she kept her smile.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Kenyan mobile government bond sales cross 50% uptake
The Kenyan government's mobile phone-based bond, M-Akiba, has crossed the 50 percent subscription rate, raising optimism that it will hit the target ahead of time, reports Business Daily. By 14:30 hrs on 29 March, at least 61,000 people had registered on the platform, and bought KES 75.2 million worth of the bond through M-Pesa and Airtel Money.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa