Microcredit In Bangladesh Research Articles

Livelihood Improvement of Poor People through Microcredit in Bangladesh

Livelihood Improvement of Poor People through Microcredit in Bangladesh

Challenges and Achievements of Microcredit in Bangladesh: A Case Study

Challenges and Achievements of Microcredit in Bangladesh: A Case Study

Microcredit in Bangladesh: Impact on Borrowers’ Social Mobility Revisited

In Bangladesh, microcredit program has been in function for almost half a century. Though popularly termed as a tool for poverty alleviation and women empowerment, criticism about microcredit program’s actual effectiveness isn’t new. This study attempts to evaluate the impact of such programs by measuring borrowers’ social mobility. Using a multidimensional approach, different associated indicators were taken into account for measurement. Quantitative method was used. Based on a non-probability sampling, 107 microcredit borrowers were selected for conducting interview schedules. Statistical analysis of data reveals that those who have been taking loans for several number of years have all managed to increase their income level to a variety of extent, but only those have gained some sort of mobility who have been taking loans for more than 4 - 5 years and have taken 5 times or more. Few of them have actually moved from microcredit to become a microfinance client by taking bigger amount of loans and having savings. Positive responses about the indicators being used in the study were found among the handful of those who have mobilized significantly. In true sense, most of the borrowers are stuck at the bottom end of socio-economic ladder and are struggling to manage a better living standard.

Microcredit System and Bangladesh

Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to impoverished borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment, or verifiable credit history. In this article, we will present some specified reports on microcredit. The noble prize winner Dr. Yunus made a revolution in Bangladesh. Here the situation of microcredit in Bangladesh with some data are presented in this article.

Impact of microcredit on women empowerment in Ishwarganj upazila of Mymensingh district in Bangladesh

Women are considered as a medium to provide microcredit in Bangladesh, who are at the same time culturally less recognized, face social obstacles and economically more vulnerable. However, many researches indicated that the status and power of women has much improved since Grameen Bank opened its doors forty years ago. Despite some critics, majority of the scholars reached to the conclusion that microcredit loans encouraged poor women and significantly increased their self-esteem and self-worth, and thereby empowered them. This study evaluates the effects of microcredit on women empowerment at Ishwarganj upazila of Mymensingh district in Bangladesh. The data was collected by using a structured questionnaire. A total 60 sample respondents were selected purposively. Empowerment was measured by five domains (production, resources, income, leadership and time). The score was positive as maximum of them achieved the desired score. The results showed that most of the females who availed the facility of microcredit finally got socioeconomic empowerment through acquiring the self-esteem, confidence level, decision making power, etc., but the question is: is it the same voice that the researchers and the researched people speak? The findings showed that microcredit might play significant impact on the uplift of socio-economic empowerment of the borrowers but we must be careful before reaching to the conclusion.
 Progressive Agriculture 30 (1): 86-94, 2019

Empowering Women through Microcredit in Bangladesh: An Empirical Study

The present study was carried out to identify the determinants of microcredit accessibility by rural women households and its impact on rural women empowerment in Bangladesh. A face-to-face survey was conducted during 2018, interviewing 300 women households in two locations in Bangladesh. Descriptive statistics and econometric modeling were used to achieve the objectives. The results of the study showed that the higher annual income inversely related with the accessibility to the microcredit program, whereas family size (P < 0.05) was positive and significantly influenced the accessibility to the microcredit program. The empirical results indicate that borrowers of microcredit have greater control over their own savings. The regression outcome also exposes that microcredit has a positive and significant impact on enhancing participation in household decision making process and women’s legal awareness. The study suggested that microcredit providers in Bangladesh should be encouraged to review their program planning and redesign loan products by putting more emphasis on higher income group women.

Trend of Microcredit in Bangladesh: A Study on Government and Non-Government Institutions and Banks.

The microcredit movement began as an action-research by Prof. Dr. Muhammad Yunus has quickly become a global phenomenon, attracting more than 100 million borrowers world-wide. This program started mid-eighties and their activities increased noticeably higher after 1990. Although non-banking institutions involved in micro finance activities in earlier now nationalized commercial banks, specialized banks and private commercial banks have also started this program in different forms. The study has found that the number of licensed microcredit institutions and their branches are incising year to year. Number of borrowers was 18.89 million in 2009 which become 23.11 million in 2016. In this period the amount of disbursed loan increased by 155.17% (BDT 306.72 billion to BDT 782.67 billion) which is a notable evidence for the growth of this sector. The micro financing of the nationalized and private commercial banks is also found in increasing trend. Up to 2002 the public commercial and specialized banks are distributed BDT 11237.19 crore and this cumulative amount is become BDT 32822.17 crore up to June 2016. Keywords: Microcredit, Growth, Banks, Microfinance institutions. DOI: 10.7176/JESD/10-3-11

Creating women’s capabilities through microcredit in Bangladesh

Group-based microcredit an extension of small amounts of collateral-free institutional loans to poor with limited access to formal credit markets has become one of the most popular development strategies in Bangladesh. The underlying logic behind the group lending model is that the provision of small loans for poor women, in particular, could facilitate socio-economic development and livelihood improvement in the rural areas. Microcredit to women is considered as a tool for empowering women with increased self-esteem, decision making capability and new income-earning opportunities. However, the impact of microcredit on marginalized people remains debated. While the positive impact of microcredit on millions of poor people’s lives has been documented by various studies, there are also studies that challenge the arguments about women empowerment through microcredit involvement. Based on interviews with 175 of economically and socially vulnerable female microcredit borrowers, the present study contributes to the continuing debate over how or if microcredit intervention enhances women’s capabilities in achieving health care utilization, food and nutrition security, and personal freedom at the local level in Bangladesh. Indices were developed to quantify the capabilities of women. To measure different aspects of capabilities, variables were analyzed through univariate and bi-variate analyses. The results of the present study confirm that microcredit involvement improves women’s basic capabilities but it is not as significant as attested by earlier studies.

Is Micro Credit in Urban Poverty Making a Difference? A Review from Bangladesh

Bangladesh has gained substantial experience in using micro credit for reducing poverty since 1980s. NGOs first adopted micro credit approach basically to empower the women attempting at generating self employment and self reliance. The government followed the policy to achieve same objectives. NGOs and GOs have launched micro credit based programs to alleviate urban poverty, especially in the slum areas. Most of the NGOs and GOs could bring urban women within the fold of different micro credit based activities. Strong criticisms exist in relation to the economic success of micro credit programs despite the consciousness that has generated. Attributed progress has been seen in many areas such as education, health care, employment, gender equality. The urban poor seem more confident now than ever before and community development approach of NGOs played vital role to elevate their overall situation. The current paper is situated in the debate of micro credit and urban poverty. This paper traces the brief history; describes the strong foundations and faith in micro-credit in Bangladesh and examines the notions of the debate: has micro credit moved the urban poor from survival mode to thrive or remains a placating phenomenon? Central to the paper is the human rights dimensions of social work and its empowerment actions.

Islamic banking and the Grameen mode of microcredit in Bangladesh: an institutional comparison

With diverse histories and attitudes toward risk-taking, different financial systems have a common aim: ensuring financial stability and efficiency within a geographical region. But differences exist between various financial systems as a result of their evolution and adaptation to their surrounding environment. This paper aims to analyze the incentive and sanction mechanisms of the Islamic mode of banking and the Grameen Bank model of microcredit in Bangladesh, and how they help ensure their financial stability and efficiency. We challenge the conventional explanations of their success. We point out that the informal sanction mechanisms embedded in the two modes of financial intermediation – avoiding non-compliance with Islamic Shari'ah (revealed divine law) in the case of Islamic banking, and kinship-based groupings or gushtis in the case of microcredit – play important roles in lowering the transaction costs of screening and enforcing contracts. We also point out how bank rent opportunity – the promised return from non-participatory financing and a high spread supported through low-cost funds provided by donor agencies and compulsory savings – is captured in each of the two modes, playing a further important role in maintaining their franchise values, given the specificities of the Bangladeshi financial context.

PROTOCOL: The effects of microcredit on women's control over household spending in developing countries

The main objective of this campbell systematic review was to provide a systematic review of the evidence on the effects of microcredit on women's control over household spending in developing countries. More specifically, we aimed to answer two related research questions: 1) what does the impact evaluative evidence say about the causal relationship between microcredit and specific dimensions of women's empowerment (women's control over household spending); and 2) what are the mechanisms which mediate this relationship. We prioritise depth of analysis over breadth, thus the scope of this review is narrower than previous systematic reviews on microfinance (stewart et al., 2010; duvendack et al. 2011; stewart et al., 2012). We focused on specific aspects of women's empowerment which allowed us to combine statistical meta-analysis and realist (context-mechanism-outcome) synthesis. From the different searches we identified an initial number of 310 papers that were selected for full text examination. Eventually, 29 papers were retained for further analysis, corresponding to 25 unique studies. In line with three recent other reviews on microfinance (stewart et al., 2010; duvendack et al., 2011; stewart et al. 2012) we found that the microcredit evidence base is extensive, yet most studies are weak methodologically. From those studies deemed comparable and of minimum acceptable quality, we concluded that overall there is no evidence for an effect of microcredit on women's control over household spending.

Aspectos del microcrédito en su concepción original, en búsqueda de factores de mayor impacto en Colombia: revisión de tema

El artículo tiene como propósito revisar la bibliografía existente de las metodologías utilizadas y los resultados del impacto social de la filosofía microcrédito Grameen en Bangladesh, su país de origen, para encontrar diferencias y posibles determinantes del bajo impacto que éste ha tenido en Colombia y señalar los aspectos fundamentales para alcanzar las metas que se buscan con el microcrédito que se pueden resumir en “erradicar la pobreza”. Adicionalmente, se hace referencia a los modelos de mayor éxito en Latinoamérica como referentes en similitud al caso colombiano. La información se obtuvo mediante la revisión, por palabra clave “Microcrédito”, de publicaciones impresas y bases de datos en internet como Dialnet, E-Libro, CEPAL, EBSCO, entre otras, además gran parte de la información se tomó de las publicaciones del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) tanto en lengua inglesa como española. Asimismo, se manifiestan factores que pueden llevar al éxito en las microfinanzas de acuerdo a investigaciones realizadas por algunos autores. En general, se establece que en Colombia se pueden adoptar los principios del Banco Grameen, ya que publicaciones mencionadas en esta investigación demuestran cómo han mejorado las condiciones de vida de las personas pobres en diferentes países.

Assessing Microcredit in Bangladesh: A Critique of the Concept of Empowerment

Assessing microcredit programs by testing their contribution to the empowerment of borrowers has been widely advocated and explored in the literature on women and development. There is considerable debate on whether microcredit empowers or disempowers women, and there are attempts to reconcile conflicting conclusions based on heterogeneous samples or data sets and grounded in a variety of methodologies. Although there is little agreement on the relation between microcredit and empowerment and no consensus on the meaning of the idea of empowerment itself, students of gender and development seem to be at one in regarding empowerment as a logically unproblematic concept. We argue that the idea of empowerment employed in this literature is vulnerable to a number of logical criticisms and cannot serve as a sound basis for determining the value of microcredit to borrowers. Our research suggests that in assessing the impact of microcredit, it is essential to consider generational and inter-generational differences it makes in the lives of borrowers and their families. Results of ethnographic work conducted in January 2008 on long-term borrowers of the Grameen Bank inform the exposition of the arguments.

The Group-lending Model and Social Closure: Microcredit, Exclusion, and Health in Bangladesh

According to social exclusion theory, health risks are positively associated with involuntary social, economic, political and cultural exclusion from society. In this paper, a social exclusion framework has been used, and available literature on microcredit in Bangladesh has been reviewed to explore the available evidence on associations among microcredit, exclusion, and health outcomes. The paper addresses the question of whether participation in group-lending reduces health inequities through promoting social inclusion. The group-lending model of microcredit is a development intervention in which small-scale credit for income-generation activities is provided to groups of individuals who do not have material collateral. The paper outlines four pathways through which microcredit can affect health status: financing care in the event of health emergencies; financing health inputs such as improved nutrition; as a platform for health education; and by increasing social capital through group meetings and mutual support. For many participants, the group-lending model of microcredit can mitigate exclusionary processes and lead to improvements in health for some; for others, it can worsen exclusionary processes which contribute to health disadvantage.

Unintended Consequences of Micro-Credit in Bangladesh: An Evaluation from Human Security Perspective

With the objective of evaluating the performance of micro-credit and its impact on poverty reduction in Bangladesh from a human security perspective, this paper identifies three unintended, yet fundamental, consequences: the exclusion of the hardcore poor from the program, producing hardcore poverty through irresponsible operation and the erosion of the value of charity. Embracing the norm of human security in micro-credit would be helpful in addressing these counter-consequences. This would require NGOs to redesign micro-credit operation in order to include all the poor, to develop social safety nets for the borrowers so that they are not pushed downwards in times of lose, and to identify alternative sources of fund so that the NGOs can continue providing charitable welfare services for the poor.

Implementing and evaluating microcredit in Bangladesh

Microcredit has been introduced to rural communities in Bangladesh as a means of economic and social development, but there are increasing doubts about its effectiveness and suggestions that it causes domestic abuse. A review of various studies indicates that microcredit can result in social disruption by exacerbating gender conflict. It is suggested that micro-level study is required before credit is introduced to local communities.