Preface
The
small and medium enterprises form the bulk of the economies of developing
countries, in terms of production and providing employment opportunity. In
formulating a strategy for attaining rapid and equitable development, the
Governments of NAM member countries should therefore focus on providing maximum
support for SMEs (including the micro ones). From the experience of a number of
NAM member countries, the “trickle-down”
approach to development has resulted in accentuating inequities and has also
rendered the economies very fragile.
In
conjunction with the programme on SMEs, and in view of the importance of
facilitating the provision of capital to SMEs and the fact that there has been
considerable experiences of various NAM member countries, such as BRAC in Bangladesh
and BRI in Indonesia, the Board of Directors decided to take up this particular
issue as part of the NAM CSSTC work programme, at present and future time.
NAM
CSSTC therefore organized a workshop on “Micro Credit Schemes in NAM Member
Countries” in Jakarta, Indonesia on 24-26 June 2002. The purpose was to
discuss the role of micro finance in poverty eradication; Government support to
micro financing; micro credit as a tool for empowering women and the philosophy
and technical aspects of micro credit services. One of the major conclusions
was, because of the urgent need, for NAM CSSTC to conduct regional or sub-regional training
programme on micro credit, to provide technical assistance and to produce
appropriate manuals/modules for NAM member countries.
Following
up the workshop, NAM CSSTC in collaboration with BRI conducted a regional
training on “Micro Credit Scheme for East Asia and the Pacific Region” in Jakarta, August 2002. The similar event was
organized in collaboration with (MEA of South Africa on “Micro Credit Schemes
for Southern Africa Region” in Pretoria, October 2002.
The
third regional training was organized in collaboration with BRAC of Bangladesh
on “Micro Finance for Practitioners in South and Central Asia” in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 24-28 March 2003. The training
focused on the practicalities of micro finance. Subjects discussed included
emergence of microfinance, financial services and its management, market
research for product development, delinquency management, financial ratio
analysis, setting interest rates, internal control, sustainability
of micro finance, building customer loyalty, and impact assessment of micro
finance programme.
This proceedings reported the process and outputs of the
regional training held in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Hope it is of useful material for micro
finance development which has been widely implemented in the developing
countries.
Publisher