The 2012 Microfinance Client Mapping: The State of Market Saturation and Inclusion in the Philippines

This paper presents the results of a nationwide mapping of microfinance clients in Philippines. A baseline data for the spatial distribution of microfinance clients across the country was established and the level of saturation in the Barangay (village) level analyzed to shed light on uneven outreach. It also compares the levels of client saturation with the country's most recent rate of poverty incidence to understand the depth of client outreach. The paper makes the following observations:

• More than 50% of the nearly 42,000 Barangays are penetrated by MFIs of which 14% is over-saturated and 49 % is saturated;
• Rural clients are given a slightly higher preference than clients in urban Barangays with rural clients having 12% more outreach;
• About 60% of the urban Barangays are penetrated compared to 50% of the rural Barangays;
• About 77% of the 1,650 municipalities in the country have microfinance clients with one-third appearing to be saturated;
• Emerging trend suggests that as the number of MFIs increases in a municipality the average of client outreach also increases;
• Low or high outreach of microfinance is independent of influence by the magnitude of the conditional cash transfer beneficiaries in provinces.