- Project Name: Poor Financing – Consultative Workshop on Poor Financing (Focus Group Discussion -FGD & Key Informant Interview -KII)
- Project Partner: Save the Children (SCI)
The activities of revolving fund loans (RFL) have positively contributed to the microbusinesses of the beneficiary groups. Group members access only financial services through their respective groups, and it is hard for them to be financially independent due to their lack of proper identification documentations (National IDs, Birth Certificates, Passports, etc.) demanded by the financial service providers when opening accounts. RFL members demonstrated an improved economic situation, a culture of saving, as well as access to credit through their groups. This translates into the abilities of families to send their children to schools, increased gender equality at the household and community level, increased income, investing in alternative income generation activities (IGAs), and increased health conditions of RFL associated beneficiaries. The summary of the key findings is outlined below:
- Only 1 person out of the 25 beneficiaries who attended the consultative workshop has accessed microcredit investment from the bank. There are other members who tried to access investment but because of a lack of proper identification documents, guarantor, and collateral, they were not able to access credits.
- There were about 12 beneficiaries who demonstrated proper identification documents but, still, they were not able to access credit due to strict requirements of the financial service institutions including the beneficiary’s financial statement, guarantor, collateral, and so on.
- It has been found that all members of the beneficiaries are preferring individual financial access instead of relying on RFL credit as this method cannot give the flexibility to group members and the member will have access to only an equal amount of credit. If an RFL member wants an investment amount, he or she will not get that choice of accessing a loan individually from microfinance institutions and it is like “one-size fits to all”. This creates that members of RFL disappear after a while due to different circumstances.
- Salama and Dahabshil banks are most banks used by the beneficiaries. A few microfinance institutions are emerging now.