David Roodman's Microfinance Open Book Blog

Four years ago, the Dutch bank ABN AMRO commissioned a report from CGD on what makes some microfinance institutions succeed as businesses. I wrote it with Uzma Qureshi. We began the project by networking, looking for good people to talk to and good institutions to learn from. Perhaps it was Beth Rhyne who pointed us to Gabriel Solorzano, the founding head of FINDESA in Nicaragua. We called him.

I've just posted the long-threatened draft of chapter 5 (.doc .pdf). To write it, I started with the text of Microfinance as Business which I wrote with Uzma Qureshi three years ago in response to a request (and grant) from the ABN AMRO bank in the person of Suellen Lazarus.

An early post, To Fee or Not to Fee, asked what we are supposed to make of advocates who assail "user fees" in health and education (which charge the poor for the services they receive) while celebrating microcredit, which is characterized by passing most of its costs on to borrowers.