Microfinance – Being a Part of the Solution

> Posted by Elisabeth Rhyne

I’m blogging today from the annual meeting of the ACCION Network taking place in Buenos Aires, hosted by Columbia Microcredito of Banco Columbia.  We spent a very interesting morning talking about the effect of the financial crisis on microfinance institutions and their clients in Latin America.  We’ve heard from Michel Burbano of Banco Solidario in Ecuador, Carlos Viteri of Financiera Apoyo Integral in El Salvador and Kurt Koenigsgfest of BancoSol in Bolivia.  Some of the points that really hit me this morning are:

• The severity of the crisis differs by country.  It is hitting El Salvador much harder than Bolivia because El Salvador is more integrated into the US economy.  What for MFIs in Bolivia is so far a somewhat challenging time is for MFIs in El Salvador a very serious situation.
• The crisis is still unfolding, but these MFIs have had time to think about how to respond and are already implementing their responses. Their most important message is: stick to your knitting.  Do what you do best.  The biggest concern is the rise of delinquency as clients’ businesses suffer.  The MFIs are responding in many ways.  The most important is focusing on their credit methodology, especially assessing client  ability and willingness to repay. 
• Some adjustments are necessary, including changing staff incentives.  When general delinquency rises

Housing the unhoused…

> Posted by David Levai

Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities, and this trend is not about to change. Among those urban dwellers in the developing world, more than a third lives in a slum or extremely precarious conditions. But numerous socially minded individuals are uncovering new ways to provide decent quality homes at affordable costs to low-income populations – helping small property owners become landlords, providing standardized housing units in recycled shipping containers, lending building material for self-improvements, etc.

In late 2008, fourteen participants invited by the Center for Financial Inclusion and ACCION Global Investments gathered in Washington, DC, with two goals in mind – to dissect the bottlenecks in the provision of affordable housing to the bottom of the pyramid in emerging markets and to identify innovative private-sector-driven solutions.

Representing India, South Africa, Kenya, Mexico, Bolivia, and the United States, these practitioners confronted their analyses of the hurdles in reaching scale and quality in housing finance for the poor as well as their vision going forward. The profiles of the attendees were varied