State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report 2003
This report on Microcredit Summit Campaign (MSC), one of the ambitious Microcredit initiatives operating in 130 countries, reviews the role microfinance sector can play in achieving the Millennium Development Goals of reducing absolute poverty by half by 2015. It elaborates the impact made, and the experiences undergone while implementing the campaign.
The report states that the sector is plagued with various deep rooted myths that act as barriers during outreaching its target population who are mostly the rural poor. The report refutes the myths based on the results of the campaign, these include:
- Microfinance institutions can identify and reach the poorest in a cost- effective manner, provided the right tools and techniques of poverty measurement are used;
- The target group can be made financially self-reliant if proper inputs are provided to them;
- Microcredit to the poor need not add debt burden as is the general perception, instead it can alleviate them from the very poor category to moderately poor.
The paper highlights that less than 1% of the total funds of UNDP and the World Bank are spent on microfinance.
Finally, it concludes that initiatives such as MSC have enabled millions of rural poor, mostly women, to take control of their lives.
