Annual Microfinance India Conference Report, 2007

This paper reports on the 2007 microfinance India conference that focused on the role of formal financial institutions and microfinance and the challenges of depth and breadth. Despite India's extensive formal financial institution infrastructure, stipulations for priority sector lending and government ownership of 80% of banking, large numbers of rural and urban poor continue to be outside the ambit of formal banking. Although impressive gains have been registered in SHG-bank linkage, the sector still continues to serve only about 10% of India's poor. Conference topics included:

• Financial inclusion;
• Links between priority sector norms and microfinance;
• Downscaling financial services through business correspondents;
• Reforms, mergers and refinance, and their effect on regional rural banks and cooperative banks;
• Role of multinational and private sector banks;
• Role of equity in microfinance;
• Problems in microfinance;
• History and future of the Self-Help-Group (SHG) movement;
• Challenges and opportunities of livelihood finance;
• Impact and social performance;
• Regional skew.

The conference also discussed social security, remittances, rural housing, and technology in microfinance.