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Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

Abstract

Indian NGOs have created at least one million self-help groups with 17,000,000 members since the self-help group concept was developed by MYRADA in the late 1980s. India is unique in that banks are permitted to lend directly to unregistered self-help groups and by May 2001, banks and cooperatives had financed 461,478 of these groups, with almost 200,000 new self-help groups financed between May 2000 and May 2001, indicating an accelerated process of expansion. The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) trains banks and refinances their loans. The key to NABARD's success is decentralization. Responsibility for group development and training is devolved to NABARD's 2,100 NGO partners and almost 450 banks and cooperatives provide banking services to the groups. According to the Microcredit Summit Report, 2,663,901 of the 6,651,701 active members of the groups financed through NABARD (most of them women) were categorized as "the poorest," making NABARD the largest microfinance initiative in Asia, with Grameen Bank a close second. (If the number of members of self-help groups not linked to bank financing are included, the number of the poorest being reached through self-help groups is at least double.) Local costs per group member to train and support a group until it can operate independently range between $4 and $12.

Biography

Kim Wilson is the Deputy Director of Programming for Catholic Relief Services in South Asia Minor.

Section

Articles

Journal Title

Journal of Microfinance

Issue and Volume

42096

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