Peter van Dijk , Netherlands
07 July 2024

After 40 years, Fin Dev, BRAC, CGAP, FINCA and their funders such as Gates Foundation etc still mix microfinance and microcredit. May I assume that is because in fact it is limited to socio-political philanthropic money for NGOs lending to specifically targeted people with absolute poverty challenges? Microfinance has so much potential to help build inclusive financial sectors that are effectively supervised by national authorities; central banks and finance ministries .... as in wealthy nations. I quote what Prof. Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameenbank explained to me in 1998: we were nearly bankrupt. First thing we do is to stop funding from foreign charities. Then make our borrowers members and transit to deposit-led funding and make lending activities profitable, under a banking license