Microfinance: The Impact of Multiple Borrowings of Microcredit among Clients of Microfinance Institutions in Central Uttar Pradesh Region of India

Abstract

Microfinance is the supply of loans, savings, and other basic financial services to the poor. Beginning of the microfinance movement is most closely associated with the economist Muhammed Yunus, who in the early 1970's was a Professor in Bangladesh. In the midst of a country-wide famine, he began making small loans to poor families in neighboring villages in an effort to break their cycle of poverty. The study has focused on the repayment problems of loans to be taken by the clients of ‘For Profit Making Microfinance Institutions (MFIs)’. Micro financing has boomed in recent years. Though founded as non-profit institutions, Indian Microfinance industry has been turbocharged by private – equity firms, nearly doubling in the year ended March 31, 2008 delivering $ 2.5 billion loans. Many microfinance lenders have recently registered as for – profit finance firms with the Reserve Bank of India, giving them wider access to funds but limiting them to ‘reasonable’ interest rates. Those rates are still high – between 20% and 40% annually, according to the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, or CGAP, hosted at the World Bank location. This creates the need for multiple borrowings. In this research, the researcher has used the regression analysis to study the effect of Age, Gender, Number of Dependent and Education level due to multiple loan contracts. Further, the relationship between variables taken in this research has been analyzed such as income of respondents and amount of loans. The findings show that actually, the multiple borrowings of clients of MFI’s are not benefiting them and in reality they are affecting their livelihood.