Financing micro-entrepreneurs for poverty alleviation: a performance analysis of microfinance services offered by BRAC, ASA, and Proshika from Bangladesh

Microfinance services have emerged as an effective tool for financing microentrepreneurs to alleviate poverty. Since the 1970s, development theorists have considered non-governmental microfinance institutions (MFIs) as the leading practitioners of sustainable development through financing micro-entrepreneurial activities. This study evaluates the impact of micro-finance services provided by MFIs on poverty alleviation. In this vein, we examine whether microfinance services contribute to poverty alleviation, and also identify bottlenecks in micro-finance programs and operations. The results indicate that the micro-loans have a statistically significant positive impact on the poverty alleviation index and consequently improve the living standard of borrowers by increasing their level of income

Competition, Performance and Portfolio Quality in Microfinance Markets

Growing competition in microfinance has been blamed for multiple borrowing, over-indebtedness and loan repayment crisis in recent times. Using the Boone indicator as a proxy for competition, we investigate how competition impacts microfinance institutions’ (MFIs’) outreach, financial performance and quality of loan portfolio in this paper. The analysis is based on data from 568 MFIs in 10 vibrant microfinance markets (Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nepal, Nicaragua, Peru and Philippines) for the period 2003-2014. We control for potential endogeneity of MFI performance, competition and other covariates by employing the generalized methods of moments (GMM) estimation technique. We find that increased competition leads to higher profitability and better loan portfolio quality of the sampled MFIs, but worsens depth of outreach to the poor, which is an indication of mission drift.Peer reviewe