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Saifur blasts NGOs for high interest on microloans

STAFF CORRESPONDENT
Finance Minister M Saifur Rahman yesterday sharply criticised certain NGOs for charging high rate of interest on micro-credit, comparing the practice to extortion.
"Micro-finance institutions [MFIs] should not take advantage of poverty for making profit. But some NGOs are doing just that, which is not acceptable," he said while speaking as a plenary discussant at a workshop held at Hotel Sheraton yesterday.
The workshop titled 'How Parliamentarians, Advocates and Other Leaders Can Get High-level Government Commitment to Microcredit Programmes and the Summit's Goal' was organised as a part of the Fourth Asia Pacific Region Micro-credit Summit.
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Saifur said, we should concentrate on reducing poverty rather than using it for business. Unleashing a caustic attack on the high rate of interest charged by certain MFIs, he labelled such operations as "a sort of Kabuliwalah business."
"I think what they are charging is extortion," the minister remarked.
He stressed generating sustainable income sources for the poor, saying, "giving them ducks and chickens is not going to bring them out of poverty."
Saifur said poverty reduction was a prime objective of economic progress and micro-credit was one of the means to realise that. But, "if good governance and efficient management are not there, microcredit won't be able to benefit its recipients."
The finance minister also reminded the commercial banks that in a poor country like Bangladesh collateral should not be demanded from rural and poor borrowers in order to increase business ventures.
Referring to the recent move to amend the Foreign Donations (Voluntary Activities) Regulation, Saifur said it was taken to ensure transparency, not to restrict NGO operations.
Speaking at the workshop, Sharad Pawar, member of parliament (MP) and president of Nationalist Congress Party of India,
said, to make the micro-credit programme a success, the government and politicians should encourage synergies between politics and economics.
Mushfiqur Rahman, MP and chairman of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Finance and Planning, chaired the workshop, where Barbara Wallace, executive director of RESULTS, USA, and Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, MP, were also in the panel of discussants.