In This Issue

Asia Pacific Region Microcredit Summit Presentation of Institutional Action Plans by Practitioner Organizations

REGISTER NOW for Middle East/Africa Region Microcredit Summit Meeting of Councils

Archived Issues

Vol 2 Iss 1 June '04
Vol 1 Iss 6 Jan. '04
Vol 1 Iss 5 Nov. '03
Vol 1 Iss 4 Sep. '03
Vol 1 Iss 3 July '03
Vol 1 Iss 2 May '03
Vol 1 Iss 1 March '03

» Current Issue

Reprinting Permissions

Subscribe to Microcredit Summit E-News

Asia Pacific Region Microcredit Summit (APRMS) Presentation of Institutional Action Plans by Practitioner Organizations
Original transcription by Barbara Cannas

Introduction by Kate McKee, Presentation by Prakash Bakshi, and following questions and answers

Ms. McKee: I'd like to ask a question to get things kicked off regarding the evidence that you have that the product is truly self-targeting enough. Could you comment a little bit further on the issue of whether SHGs are truly, generally, including very poor households. Is there any evidence of self-exclusion or exclusion of poorer segments? Also could you address the issue of what happens to these SHGs over time? Are they stable? Do they continue to hold together? When they dissolve—how do they re-form? [T]hat seems to be a key element in projecting getting 20 million in a short period of time.

Mr. Bakshi: As I mentioned, the product design is such which excludes—or I'd like to modify what I had said, in the sense that I mentioned that the group had to be homogenous…If there is a group that can save say only one rupee a week, it will generally tend to exclude people who can save five rupees a week. But there is no harm in having another group where all the members save five rupees a week…the product design needs to be such that you create homogenous groups so that all members of that group are almost of the same socio-economic level…[Because] you must feel some commonality, only then you will feel like a group….The second question was what happens to the groups after some time. When a group is formed, it takes some time for the group to become stable. When you assemble twenty people, let us not expect that all twenty people will remain there. Some people will walk out, some new people will walk in. But after a process of maybe six months to one year, the group will stabilize. At this point the members typically would not like many new entrants to come. So what we have found is that between six months and one year, groups stabilize.

2004 Institutional Action Plan by NABARD: Page 1-2