Beyond Micro-Credit: Putting development back into micro-finance

by Thomas Fisher, M S Sriram

Micro-finance is one of the fastest growing development strategies, in many ways it is already outgrowing development with several micro-finance institutions becoming banks. But it is becoming clear that the provision of credit for enterprise development is not on its own leading to development. Beyond Micro-Credit sets out how Indian Micro-Finance Initiatives are combining micro-finance with a wide range of development goals, these include not only poverty alleviation through providing savings, credit and insurance services but also promoting livelihoods, empowering women, building people's organizations and changing institutions. It illustrates each of these from actual microfinance practice and explores the organizational challenges of combining such development goals with financial service provision. It includes detailed analysis of "self-help groups"; comparisons with microfinance practice in Bangladesh and contemporary methods of assessing performance and impact.

392 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2002

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Reviews

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little annoying with the way it is broken up, but interesting in the way he deals with the issues of and critics of micro-financing institutions.