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Time to go for a new round of microcredit projects

Analysts say the programmes should also focus on job creation, education and healthcare

Star Business Report
Bangladesh will have to start a new round of microcredit programmes that will not only help alleviate poverty but also focus on job creation, healthcare and education to ensure sustainable development, analysts said yesterday.
"The days of first generation microcredit are over. It's time to focus on the second generation," said Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, chairman oflnstituteofMicrofinance(InM).
Microcredit has already contributed to reducing the country's poverty by 5 percent,
he said at the closing ceremony of a two-day national conference on "microfinance and development" at Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation auditorium in Dhaka.
InM, which works to meet research and training needs of national and global microcredit and poverty reduction programmes, organised the conference.
"But for sustainable development, the microcredit programmes should incorporate a number of elements, such as heath, education and income generating activities, " Ahmad said.
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Finance Minster AMA Muhith said microcredit is a concept more than 100 years old and flourished in the continent with the help of independent sponsors.
Microfinance institutions now disburse a significant portion of credit, the minister said. 'It’s a tremendous progress. ’
However, he said, "Microcredit is not the only solution to poverty.”
Takao Toda, Japan International Cooperation Agency's chief representative in Bangladesh, said a "human centric approach" has to be considered while designing the
microcredit programmes.
"Bangladesh is the birthplace of microcredit,” said PaulineTamesis, country director of UNDP in Bangladesh.
Microfinance institutions contribute around 3 percent to Bangladesh's economy, she said.
Gaining lessons from Bangladesh, the UNDP is implementing a number of projects locally and globally, Tamesis said.
The InM also organised six technical sessions covering areas such as financial inclusion in Bangladesh, access to finance and enterprise development,
microfinance and poverty, mircro insurance and food security, during the conference.
Around 66 percent of the households in Bangladesh now have access to credit, savings and insurance from banks or microfinance institutions and cooperatives, according to a study of the InM.
Access to credit contributes to higher productivity by more than 176 percent in terms of total factor productivity and by 13 percent in average productivity of labour and sales than credit-constrained enterprises.
In absence of such institutions, the overall financial access
becomes shallow, and even in absence of microcredit, extreme poverty in rural Bangladesh would have been 9-12 percent higher, according to the research findings.
"The purpose of the conference was to put focus not only on poverty, but also on development," said MA Baqui Khalily, executive director of InM.
Shahnila Tazreen Azher, senior policy adviser to DFID Bangladesh, also spoke.
The conference has brought together more than 350 participants from national and international organisations.