In a recent post on CGAP's blog, Richard Rosenberg writes about a debate he moderated at this years World Microfinance Forum between Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, and Michael Chu, former president of ACCION, over the impact commercialization is having on microfinance. Rosenberg writes:
I had one more reflection after the event. As I listened to and thought over the issues, it became clear to me that a core question in this argument is a factual one: is there enough government and socially-oriented capital to meet eventual worldwide demand for microfinance, or is there not? Neither debater had much to offer by way of evidence to support their opposing assertions about this....
and later in the post:
... even if we knew what the demand would be, that gets us toward an answer only if we also have some kind of fix on how much subsidized and soft money is floating around out there. Neither debater had anything to offer on that one. I don't either...
This is an essential question and one that I had not formulated. Rosenberg has also written an incisive case study on the commercialization of the Mexican MFI Compartamos, in response to the controversy surrounding the MFI's IPO.
For more on commercialization and microfinance, check out Selvan Kumar's earlier post on this subject.
0 comments:
Post a Comment