Перевод статьи на тему “Microfinance”
Федеральное агентство по образованию Российской Федерации
Государственное образовательное учреждение высшего профессионального образования
«Уральский федеральный университет»
Факультет «Лингвистика»
Кафедра «Иностранные языки»
КУРСОВАЯ РАБОТА
по дисциплине «Теория и практика перевода»
Перевод статьи на тему “Microfinance”
Руководитель:
__________ И.Н. Идинахин
«___»_____________2012 г.
Автор работы:
студент группы ЭиУ-504
__________С.Н. Левахин
«___»_____________2012 г.
Челябинск, 2012
ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ
ОРИГИНАЛ ТЕКСТА: “MICROFINANCE” 3
ПЕРЕВОД ТЕКСТА: «МИКРОФИНАНСИРОВАНИЕ»
ГЛОССАРИЙ 26
ОРИГИНАЛ ТЕКСТА: “MICROFINANCE”
Microfinance
Microfinance refers to the provision of financial services to low-income clients, including consumers and the self-employed.
More broadly, it refers to a movement that envisions “a world in which as many poor and near-poor households as possible have permanent access to an appropriate range of high quality financial services, including not just credit but also savings, insurance, and fund transfers.” Those who promote microfinance generally believe that such access will help poor people out of poverty.
1. The challenge
Traditionally, banks have not provided financial services to clients with little or no cash income. Banks must incur substantial costs to manage a client account, regardless of how small the sums of money involved. For example, the total revenue from delivering one hundred loans worth $1,000 each will not differ greatly from the revenue that results from delivering one loan of $100,000. But the fixed cost of processing loans—of any size—is considerable: assessment of potential borrowers, their repayment prospects and security; administration of outstanding loans, collecting from delinquent borrowers and so on. There is a break-even point1 in providing loans or deposits below which banks lose money on each transaction they make. Poor people usually fall below it.
In addition, most poor people have few assets that can be secured by a bank as collateral. As documented extensively by Hernando de Soto and others, even if they happen to own land in the developing world, they may not have effective title2 to it. This means that the bank will have little recourse against defaulting borrowers.
Seen from a broader perspective, it has long been accepted that the development of a healthy national financial system is an important goal and catalyst for the broader goal of national economic development (see for example Alexander Gerschenkron, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, Joseph Schumpeter, Anne Krueger etc.). However, the efforts of national planners and experts to develop financial services for their nations' majorities have often failed since World War II, for reasons summarized well by Adams, Graham & Von Pischke in their classic analysis 'Undermining Rural Development with Cheap Credit'.
Because of these difficulties, when poor people borrow they often rely on relatives or a local moneylender, whose interest rates can be very high. An analysis of 28 studies of informal moneylending rates in fourteen countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa concluded that 76% of moneylender rates exceed 10% per month, including 22% that exceed 100% per month. Moneylenders usually charge higher rates to poorer borrowers than to less poor ones. While moneylenders are often demonized and accused of usury, their services are convenient and fast, and they can be very flexible when borrowers run into problems. Hopes of quickly putting them out of business have proven unrealistic, even in places where microfinance institutions are very active.
Over the past centuries practical visionaries from the Franciscan monks who founded the community-oriented pawnshops of the fifteenth century, to the founders of the European credit union movement in the nineteenth century (such as Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen) and the founders of the microcredit movement in the 1970s (such as Muhammad Yunus) have tested practices and built institutions designed to bring the kinds of livelihood opportunities and risk management tools that financial services provide to the doorsteps of poor people. While the success of Grameen Bank (which now serves over seven million poor Bangladeshi women) has inspired the world, it has proved difficult to replicate this success in practice. In nations with lower population densities, meeting the operating costs of a retail branch by serving nearby customers has proven considerably more challenging.
Although much progress has been made, the problem has not been solved yet, and the overwhelming majority of people who earn less than $1 a day, especially in the rural areas, continue to have no practical access to formal sector finance. Microfinance has been growing rapidly with $25B currently at work in microfinance loans. It is estimated that the industry needs $250 billion to get capital to all the poor people who need it. The industry has been growing rapidly and there have been concerns that the rate of capital flowing into microfinance is a potential risk unless managed well.
2. Boundaries and principles
Theoretically, microfinance may encompass any efforts to increase access to, or improve the quality of, financial services poor people currently use or could benefit from using. For example, poor people borrow from informal moneylenders and save with informal collectors. They receive loans and grants from charities. They buy insurance from state-owned companies. They receive funds transfers through remittance networks (like Hawala).
There are not many bright lines that can sharply distinguish microfinance from similar activities. Claims could be made that a government that orders state banks to open deposit accounts for poor consumers, or a moneylender that engages in usury, or a charity that runs a heifer pool3 are engaged in microfinance. Furthermore, correcting the problem of access is best done by expanding the number of financial institutions available to them, as well as the capacity of those institutions. In recent years there has been increasing emphasis on expanding the diversity of those institutions as well, since different institutions serve different needs.
Some principles that summarize a century and a half of development practice were encapsulated in 2004 by Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and endorsed by the Group of Eight leaders at the G8 Summit on June 10, 2004:
1. Poor people need not just loans but also savings, insurance and money transfer services.
2. Microfinance must be useful to poor households: helping them raise income, build up assets and/or cushion themselves against external shocks.
3. “Microfinance can pay for itself.” Subsidies from donors and government are scarce and uncertain, and so to reach large numbers of poor people, microfinance must pay for itself.
4. Microfinance means building permanent local institutions.
5. Microfinance also means integrating the financial needs of poor people into a country’s mainstream financial system.
6. “The job of government is to enable financial services, not to provide them.”
7. “Donor funds should complement private capital, not compete with it.”
8. “The key bottleneck is the shortage of strong institutions and managers.” Donors should focus on capacity building.
9. Interest rate ceilings hurt poor people by preventing microfinance institutions from covering their costs, which chokes off the supply of credit.
10. Microfinance institutions should measure and disclose their performance – both financially and socially.
Microfinance can also be distinguished from charity. It is better to provide grants to families who are destitute, or so poor they are unlikely to be able to generate the cash flow required to repay a loan. This situation can occur for example, in a war zone or after a natural disaster.
3. Debates at the boundaries
There are several key debates at the boundaries of microfinance.
Practitioners and donors from the charitable side of microfinance frequently argue for restricting microcredit to loans for productive purposes–such as to start or expand a microenterprise. Those from the private-sector side respond that because money is fungible4, such a restriction is impossible to enforce, and that in any case it should not be up to rich people to determine how poor people use their money.
Perhaps influenced by traditional Western views about usury, the role of the traditional moneylender has been subject to much criticism, especially in the early stages of modern microfinance. As more poor people gained access to loans from microcredit institutions however, it became apparent that the services of moneylenders continued to be valued. Borrowers were prepared to pay very high interest rates for services like quick loan disbursement, confidentiality and flexible repayment schedules. They did not always see lower interest rates as adequate compensation for the costs of attending meetings, attending training courses to qualify for disbursements or making monthly collateral contributions. They also found it distasteful to be forced to pretend they were borrowing to start a business, when they were often borrowing for other reasons (such as paying for school fees, dealing with health costs or securing the family food supply). The more recent focus on inclusive financial systems (see section below) affords moneylenders more legitimacy, arguing in favour of regulation and efforts to increase competition between them to expand the options available to poor people.
Modern microfinance emerged in the 1970s with a strong orientation towards private-sector solutions. This resulted from evidence that state-owned agricultural development banks in developing countries had been a monumental failure, actually undermining the development goals they were intended to serve (see the compilation edited by Adams, Graham & Von Pischke). Nevertheless public officials in many countries hold a different view, and continue to intervene in microfinance markets.
There has been a long-standing debate over the sharpness of the trade-off between 'outreach' (the ability of a microfinance institution to reach poorer and more remote people) and its 'sustainability' (its ability to cover its operating costs -- and possibly also its costs of serving new clients -- from its operating revenues). Although it is generally agreed that microfinance practitioners should seek to balance these goals to some extent, there are a wide variety of strategies, ranging from the minimalist profit-orientation of BancoSol in Bolivia to the highly integrated not-for-profit orientation of BRAC in Bangladesh. This is true not only for individual institutions, but also for governments engaged in developing national microfinance systems.
Microfinance experts generally agree that women should be the primary focus of service delivery. Evidence shows that they are less likely to default on their loans than men. Industry data from 2006 for 704 MFIs reaching 52 million borrowers includes MFIs using the solidarity lending5 methodology (99.3% female clients) and MFIs using individual lending (51% female clients). The delinquency rate6 for solidarity lending was 0.9% after 30 days (individual lending—3.1%), while 0.3% of loans were written off (individual lending—0.9%).Because operating margins become tighter the smaller the loans delivered, many MFIs consider the risk of lending to men to be too high. This focus on women is questioned sometimes, however. A recent study of microenterpreneurs from Sri Lanka published by the World Bank found that the return on capital7 for male-owned businesses (half of the sample) averaged 11%, whereas the return for women-owned businesses was 0% or slightly negative.
Microfinancial services are needed everywhere, including the developed world. However, in developed economies intense competition within the financial sector, combined with a diverse mix of different types of financial institutions with different missions, ensures that most people have access to some financial services. Efforts to transfer microfinance innovations such as solidarity lending from developing countries to developed ones have met with little success.
4. Financial needs of poor people
Financial needs and financial services.
In developing economies and particularly in the rural areas, many activities that would be classified in the developed world as financial are not monetized: that is, money is not used to carry them out. Almost by definition, poor people have very little money. But circumstances often arise in their lives in which they need money or the things money can buy.
In Stuart Rutherford’s recent book The Poor and Their Money, he cites several types of needs:
Lifecycle Needs: such as weddings, funerals, childbirth, education, homebuilding, widowhood, old age.
Personal Emergencies: such as sickness, injury, unemployment, theft, harassment or death.
Disasters: such as fires, floods, cyclones and man-made events like war or bulldozing of dwellings.
Investment Opportunities: expanding a business, buying land or equipment, improving housing, securing a job (which often requires paying a large bribe), etc.
Poor people find creative and often collaborative ways to meet these needs, primarily through creating and exchanging different forms of non-cash value. Common substitutes for cash vary from country to country but typically include livestock, grains, jewellery and precious metals.
As Marguerite Robinson describes in The Microfinance Revolution, the 1980s demonstrated that “microfinance could provide large-scale outreach profitably,” and in the 1990s, “microfinance began to develop as an industry” (2001, p. 54). In the 2000s, the microfinance industry’s objective is to satisfy the unmet demand on a much larger scale, and to play a role in reducing poverty. While much progress has been made in developing a viable, commercial microfinance sector in the last few decades, several issues remain that need to be addressed before the industry will be able to satisfy massive worldwide demand. The obstacles or challenges to building a sound commercial microfinance industry include:
• Inappropriate donor subsidies
• Poor regulation and supervision of deposit-taking MFIs
• Few MFIs that meet the needs for savings, remittances or insurance
• Limited management capacity in MFIs
• Institutional inefficiencies
• Need for more dissemination and adoption of rural, agricultural microfinance methodologies
5. Ways in which poor people manage their money
Saving up
Rutherford argues that the basic problem poor people as money managers face is to gather a ‘usefully large’ amount of money. Building a new home may involve saving and protecting diverse building materials for years until enough are available to proceed with construction. Children’s schooling may be funded by buying chickens and raising them for sale as needed for expenses, uniforms, bribes, etc. Because all the value is accumulated before it is needed, this money management strategy is referred to as ‘saving up’.
Often people don’t have enough money when they face a need, so they borrow. A poor family might borrow from relatives to buy land, from a moneylender to buy rice, or from a microfinance institution to buy a sewing machine. Since these loans must be repaid by saving after the cost is incurred, Rutherford calls this ‘saving down’. Rutherford's point is that microcredit is addressing only half the problem, and arguably the less important half: poor people borrow to help them save and accumulate assets. Microcredit institutions should fund their loans through savings accounts that help poor people manage their myriad risks.
Saving down
Most needs are met through mix of saving and credit. A benchmark impact assessment of Grameen Bank and two other large microfinance institutions in Bangladesh found that for every $1 they were lending to clients to finance rural non-farm micro-enterprise, about $2.50 came from other sources, mostly their clients’ savings. This parallels the experience in the West, in which family businesses are funded mostly from savings, especially during start-up.
Recent studies have also shown that informal methods of saving are very unsafe. For example a study by Wright and Mutesasira in Uganda concluded that “those with no option but to save in the informal sector are almost bound to lose some money – probably around one quarter of what they save there.”
The work of Rutherford, Wright and others has caused practitioners to reconsider a key aspect of the microcredit paradigm: that poor people get out of poverty by borrowing, building microenterprises and increasing their income. The new paradigm places more attention on the efforts of poor people to reduce their many vulnerabilities by keeping more of what they earn and building up their assets. While they need loans, they may find it as useful to borrow for consumption as for microenterprise. A safe, flexible place to save money and withdraw it when needed is also essential for managing household and family risk.
6. Current scale of microfinance operations
No systematic effort to map the distribution of microfinance has yet been undertaken. A useful recent benchmark was established by an analysis of ‘alternative financial institutions’ in the developing world in 2004. The authors counted approximately 665 million client accounts at over 3,000 institutions that are serving people who are poorer than those served by the commercial banks. Of these accounts, 120 million were with institutions normally understood to practice microfinance. Reflecting the diverse historical roots of the movement, however, they also included postal savings banks (318 million accounts), state agricultural and development banks (172 million accounts), financial cooperatives and credit unions (35 million accounts) and specialized rural banks (19 million accounts).
Regionally the highest concentration of these accounts was in India (188 million accounts representing 18% of the total national population). The lowest concentrations were in Latin American and the Caribbean (14 million accounts representing 3% of the total population) and Africa (27 million accounts representing 4% of the total population). Considering that most bank clients in the developed world need several active accounts to keep their affairs in order, these figures indicate that the task the microfinance movement has set for itself is still very far from finished.
By type of service “savings accounts in alternative finance institutions outnumber loans by about four to one. This is a worldwide pattern that does not vary much by region.”
An important source of detailed data on selected microfinance institutions is the MicroBanking Bulletin. At the end of 2006 it was tracking 704 MFIs that were serving 52 million borrowers ($23.3 billion in outstanding loans) and 56 million savers ($15.4 billion in deposits). Of these clients, 70% were in Asia, 20% in Latin America and the balance in the rest of the world.
As yet there are no studies that indicate the scale or distribution of ‘informal’ microfinance organizations like ROSCAs9 and informal associations that help people manage costs like weddings, funerals and sickness. Numerous case studies have been published however, indicating that these organizations, which are generally designed and managed by poor people themselves with little outside help, operate in most countries in the developing world.
7. "Inclusive financial systems"
The microcredit era that began in the 1970s has lost its momentum, to be replaced by a ‘financial systems’ approach. While microcredit achieved a great deal, especially in urban and near-urban areas and with entrepreneurial families, its progress in delivering financial services in less densely populated rural areas has been slow.
The new financial systems approach pragmatically acknowledges the richness of centuries of microfinance history and the immense diversity of institutions serving poor people in developing world today. It is also rooted in an increasing awareness of diversity of the financial service needs of the world’s poorest people, and the diverse settings in which they live and work.
Brigit Helms in her book 'Access for All: Building Inclusive Financial Systems', distinguishes between four general categories of microfinance providers, and argues for a pro-active strategy of engagement with all of them to help them achieve the goals of the microfinance movement.
Informal financial service providers
These include moneylenders, pawnbrokers, savings collectors, money-guards, ROSCAs, ASCAs10 and input supply shops11. Because they know each other well and live in the same community, they understand each other’s financial circumstances and can offer very flexible, convenient and fast services. These services can also be costly and the choice of financial products limited and very short-term. Informal services that involve savings are also risky; many people lose their money.
Member-owned organizations12
These include self-help groups13, credit unions, and a variety of hybrid organizations like ‘financial service associations’ and CVECAs14. Like their informal cousins, they are generally small and local, which means they have access to good knowledge about each others’ financial circumstances and can offer convenience and flexibility. Since they are managed by poor people, their costs of operation are low. However, these providers may have little financial skill and can run into trouble when the economy turns down or their operations become too complex. Unless they are effectively regulated and supervised, they can be ‘captured’ by one or two influential leaders, and the members can lose their money.
NGOs
The Microcredit Summit Campaign counted 3,316 of these MFIs and NGOs lending to about 133 million clients by the end of 2006. Led by Grameen Bank and BRAC in Bangladesh, Prodem in Bolivia, and FINCA International, headquartered in Washington, DC, these NGOs have spread around the developing world in the past three decades; others, like the Gamelan Council, address larger regions. They have proven very innovative, pioneering banking techniques like solidarity lending, village banking and mobile banking that have overcome barriers to serving poor populations. However, with boards that don’t necessarily represent either their capital or their customers, their governance structures can be fragile, and they can become overly dependent on external donors.
Formal financial institutions
In addition to commercial banks, these include state banks, agricultural development banks, savings banks, rural banks and non-bank financial institutions. They are regulated and supervised, offer a wider range of financial services, and control a branch network that can extend across the country and internationally. However, they have proved reluctant to adopt social missions, and due to their high costs of operation, often can’t deliver services to poor or remote populations. The increasing use of alternative data in credit scoring, such as trade credit is increasing commercial banks' interest in microfinance.
With appropriate regulation and supervision, each of these institutional types can bring leverage to solving the microfinance problem. For example, efforts are being made to link self-help groups to commercial banks, to network member-owned organizations together to achieve economies of scale and scope, and to support efforts by commercial banks to ‘down-scale’ by integrating mobile banking and e-payment technologies into their extensive branch networks.
8. Microcredit and the web
Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimal qualifications to gain access to traditional credit. Microcredit is a part of microfinance, which is the provision of a wider range of financial services to the very poor.
Microcredit is a financial innovation that is generally considered to have originated with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. In that country, it has successfully enabled extremely impoverished people to engage in self-employment projects that allow them to generate an income and, in many cases, begin to build wealth and exit poverty. Due to the success of microcredit, many in the traditional banking industry have begun to realize that these microcredit borrowers should more correctly be categorized as pre-bankable15; thus, microcredit is increasingly gaining credibility in the mainstream finance industry, and many traditional large finance organizations are contemplating microcredit projects as a source of future growth, even though almost everyone in larger development organizations discounted the likelihood of success of microcredit when it was begun. The United Nations declared 2005 the International Year of Microcredit.
The principles of microcredit have also been applied in attempting to address several non-poverty-related issues. Among these, multiple Internet-based organizations have developed platforms that facilitate a modified form of peer-to-peer lending16 where a loan is not made in the form of a single, direct loan, but as the aggregation of a number of smaller loans—often at a negligible interest rate. There are several ways by which the general public can participate in alleviating poverty using Web platforms.
Kiva launched in 2005 (United States), MicroPlace in 2006 (United States), MyC4 in 2007 (Denmark), followed by United Prosperity (United States), 51Give, Wokai (China), Rang De (India) and United Youth Development Organisation (United Kingdom) in 2008. The volume channeled through Kiva's peer-to-peer platform is ~87 M USD as of August 2009 (Kiva facilitates approximately $5M in loans each month). In comparison, the needs for microcredit are estimated about 250 bn USD as of end 2006.
Most experts agree that these funds must be sourced locally in countries that are originating microcredit, to reduce transaction costs and exchange rate risks.
There have been problems with disclosure on peer-to-peer sites, with some reporting interest rates of borrowers using the flat rate methodology instead of the familiar banking Annual Percentage Rate. The use of flat rates, which has been outlawed among regulated financial institutions in developed countries, can confuse individual lenders into believing their borrower is paying a lower interest rate than, in fact, they are. A recent industry-wide initiative to bring disclosure to international truth in lending standards has been endorsed by many the key stakeholders in microcredit pricing.
9. Evidence for reducing poverty
Some proponents of microfinance have asserted, without offering credible evidence, that microfinance has the power to single-handedly defeat poverty. This assertion has been the source of considerable criticism. In addition, research on the actual effectiveness of microfinance as a tool for economic development remains slim, in part owing to the difficulty in monitoring and measuring this impact. At the 2008 Innovations for Poverty Action/Financial Access Initiative Microfinance Research conference, economist Jonathan Morduch of New York University noted there are only one or two methodologically sound studies of microfinance's impact.
Sociologist Jon Westover found that much of the evidence on the effectiveness of microfinance for alleviating poverty is based in anecdotal reports or case studies. He initially found over 100 articles on the subject, but included only the 6 which used enough quantitative data to be representative. One of these studies found that microfinance reduced poverty. Two others were unable to conclude that microfinance reduced poverty, although they attributed some positive effects to the program. Other studies concluded similarly, with surveys finding that a majority of participants feel better about finances with some feeling worse.
In May 2009 the Innovations for Poverty Action in New Haven published a paper which found that those randomized to receive financial training had higher profits, although other effects such as reducing "the proportion who reported having problems in their business" did not occur.
10. Microfinance and Social Interventions
There are currently a few social interventions that have been combined with micro financing to increase awareness of HIV/AIDS. Such interventions like the “Intervention with Microfinance for AIDS and Gender Equity” (IMAGE) which incorporates microfinancing with “The Sisters-for-Life” program a participatory program that educates on different gender roles, gender-based violence, and HIV/AIDS infections to strengthen the communication skills and leadership of women "The Sisters-for-Life" program has two phases where phase one consists of ten one-hour training programs with a facilitator with phase two consisting of identifying a leader amongst the group, train them further, and allow them to implement an Action Plan to their respective centres. Microfinance has also been combined with business education, and with other packages of health interventions. Some organizations like BRAC (NGO) also combine microfinance with other social interventions.
11. Other criticisms
There has also been much criticism of the high interest rates charged to borrowers. The real average portfolio yield cited by the a sample of 704 microfinance institutions that voluntarily submitted reports to the MicroBanking Bulletin in 2006 was 22.3% annually. However, annual rates charged to clients are higher, as they also include local inflation and the bad debt expenses of the microfinance institution. Muhammad Yunus has recently made much of this point, and in his latest book argues that microfinance institutions that charge more than 15% above their long-term operating costs should face penalties.
The role of donors has also been questioned. The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) recently commented that "a large proportion of the money they spend is not effective, either because it gets hung up in unsuccessful and often complicated funding mechanisms (for example, a government apex facility), or it goes to partners that are not held accountable for performance. In some cases, poorly conceived programs have retarded the development of inclusive financial systems by distorting markets and displacing domestic commercial initiatives with cheap or free money."
There has also been criticism of microlenders for not taking more responsibility for the working conditions of poor households, particularly when borrowers become quasi-wage labourers, selling crafts or agricultural produce through an organization controlled by the MFI. The desire of MFIs to help their borrower diversify and increase their incomes has sparked this type of relationship in several countries, most notably Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of borrowers effectively work as wage labourers for the marketing subsidiaries of Grameen Bank or BRAC. Critics maintain that there are few if any rules or standards in these cases governing working hours, holidays, working conditions, safety or child labour, and few inspection regimes to correct abuses. Some of these concerns have been taken up by unions and socially responsible investment advocates.
ПЕРЕВОД ТЕКСТА: «МИКРОФИНАНСИРОВАНИЕ»
Микрофинансирование
Микрофинансирование представляет собой предоставление финансовых услуг определенной категории клиентов, доходы которых находятся на низком уровне (в частности, как простым потребителям, так и лицам, занимающимся мелким индивидуальным предпринимательством).
В более широком смысле, пот термином «микрофинансирование» понимается потенциальное средство, благодаря которому максимум домашних хозяйств, находящихся на пороге бедности и за его пределом по всему миру, получат постоянный доступ на рынок высококачественных финансовых услуг, причем не только кредитных ресурсов, но также сбережений, денежных переводов и страховых услуг.
1. Серьезное испытание
Обычно, в практику банков не входит предоставление финансовых услуг клиентам, денежный доход которых чрезвычайно мал, либо вовсе отсутствует. Банки вынуждены нести существенные издержки, связанные с обслуживанием лицевого счета клиента, не обращая внимание на то, насколько малыми могут оказываться суммы на этих счетах. К примеру, суммарный доход, полученный от обслуживания ста предоставленных займов на сумму $1000 каждый, не будет разительно отличаться от дохода, полученного в результате обслуживания одного предоставленного займа на сумму $100000. Однако постоянные издержки, связанные с обслуживанием займов любого размера, очень высоки. Она включают расходы на оценку платежеспособности заемщика, разработку программы погашения долга, обеспечение безопасности, управление суммами непогашенных долгов, а также взимание долгов с не выполняющих свои обязательства заемщиков и т.д. В области предоставления займов (либо же открытия депозитных счетов) существует точка безубыточности1, находясь ниже которой, банки несут убытки от каждой совершаемой ими операции. Небогатые люди обычно находятся существенно ниже этой точки.
К тому же, у малообеспеченных людей нет возможности предоставить банку залог. В многочисленных трудах Хернандо де Сото и других экономистов отмечено, что, даже если небогатым жителям развивающихся стран удается стать собственниками земли, действительные юридические основания2 на подобное действие практически отсутствуют. Это означает, что банки вряд ли окажут поддержку должникам, не выполняющим своих обязательств.
С другой же стороны, достаточно давно признан тот факт, что здоровое развитие финансовой системы государства является важнейшей задачей и, более того, катализатором, способствующим достижению гораздо более масштабной цели – развития национальной экономики в целом (прочтите, к примеру, работы Александра Герщенкрона, Пола Розенштайна-Родена, Йозефа Шумпетра, Анны Крюгер и проч.). Однако ввиду причин, сформулированных еще Адамсом, Грэмом и Фон Пичке в их классическом труде «Дешевый кредит как тормозящий фактор развития сельского хозяйства», еще со времен Второй Мировой Войны попытки государственных плановиков и экспертов развивать сектор финансовых услуг, делая его доступным для большинства граждан, оканчивались провалом.
Из-за данных причин, для получения кредита, небогатые люди чаще всего вынуждены рассчитывать на поддержку со стороны своих родственников, либо же на услуги знакомого ростовщика. По обобщенным результатам двадцати восьми исследований, направленных на изучение неофициального уровня процентных ставок в секторе ростовщичества в четырнадцати странах Азии, Латинской Америки и Африки, было установлено следующее: ставка, превышающая 10% ежемесячно, встречается в 76% случаев, из которых, в свою очередь, четверть устанавливает ежемесячную ставку в размере ста процентов. Размер процентной ставки у ростовщиков обычно больше для небогатых заемщиков, нежели чем для менее бедных. Но несмотря на то, что ростовщиков часто обвиняют во взимании необоснованно высоких процентов, их услуги отличаются удобством, быстротой а также гибкостью, если у заемщика возникают проблемы. Надежды на то, что ростовщичество удастся быстро искоренить, доказали свою беспочвенность, даже в тех регионах, где институт микрофинансирования особо развит.
Со времен монахов-францисканцев, в пятнадцатом веке заложивших основы ломбардов, до появления в девятнадцатом веке сторонников создания Европейского кредитного союза (таких, как Фредерик Вильгельм Райффайзен) и по семидесятые годы ХХ века, когда Мухаммед Юнус и некоторые другие экономистами впервые заговорили о микрокредитовании, была предпринята масса попыток по созданию особого финансового института, который смог бы предоставлять как средства к существованию для бедного населения, так и инструменты риск-менеджмента для организаций, предоставляющих соответствующие финансовые услуги. И хотя успех Гремин Банка (который на сегодняшний день обслуживает более семи миллионов бедных женщин Бангладеша) послужил вдохновением для всего мира, он наглядно показал, что повторить подобный успех на практике будет крайне тяжело.
Не смотря на то, что был сделан серьезный шаг вперед, проблема все еще остается нерешенной, и подавляющее большинство людей, чей ежедневный доход составляет менее $1, особенно в сельских зонах, до сих пор фактически не имеют доступа к финансовому сектору. Институт микрофинансирования стремительно развивается: на сегодняшний день в сфере микрокредитования задействовано более $25 миллиардов, хотя установлено, что для обеспечения всех нуждающихся людей финансовыми средствами, необходимо $250 миллиардов. Однако данная индустрия развивается быстрыми темпами, и уже достигнуто понимание того, что риска потери капитала от этой деятельности не существует при грамотном риск-менеджменте.
2. Черты и принципы
Теоретически, микрофинансирование охватывает собой любые попытки по увеличению доступности и улучшению качества финансовых услуг, которыми малоимущие слои населения уже пользуются либо же от использования которых могут получить выгоду. Примером может послужить то, что малообеспеченные люди берут займы у ростовщиков и сберегают средства, пользуясь услугами спекулянтов. Малоимущие получают финансовую помощь посредством благотворительности, страхуются в государственных страховых компаниях, получают денежные переводы через широкие финансово-расчетные сети (такие, как Хавала).
Существует не так много специфических черт, отличающих микрофинансирование от других похожих видов деятельности. Часто утверждается, что ситуация, в которой государство обязывает свой Центробанк открывать депозитные счета малоимущим гражданам, или ростовщик, дающий деньги под проценты, или же благотворительная организация, борющаяся с голодом и бедностью3, также относятся к институту микрофинансирования. Более того, увеличение доступности финансовых услуг наиболее эффективно осуществляется не только путем увеличения эффективности финансовых учреждений для бедных слоев населения, но и с помощью увеличения количества данных учреждений. В течение последних нескольких лет, всё больший акцент делался также на увеличение разнообразия подобных институтов, т.к. каждый конкретный тип служит различным целям.
Некоторые принципы, в которых подытожена полувековая история развития микрофинансирования, были в 2004 году сформулированы Консультативной Организацией по Оказанию Помощи Бедным и поддержаны лидерами стран Большой Восьмерки на Саммите 10го июня 2004 года:
1. Малообеспеченным людям, помимо кредитов, требуется доступ к услугам по сбережению средств, страховым услугам, а также денежным переводам.
2. Для домашних хозяйств, находящихся на грани бедности, микрофинансирование может оказать существенную помощь в получении доходов, накоплении имущества и/или в предотвращении последствий экономических потрясений.
3. «Микрофинансирование может быть самоокупаемым». Субсидии от государства и из других источников ограничены и непостоянны, поэтому для того, чтобы стать доступным для каждого малообеспеченного человека, микрофинансирование должно быть самоокупаемым.
4. Под микрофинансированием подразумевается образование действующих на постоянной основе учреждений локального характера.
5. Микрофинансирование, помимо всего прочего, подразумевает включение финансовых потребностей малообеспеченных слоев населения в основу финансовой системы государства.
6. «Задача государства – не просто предоставлять финансовые услуги, а обеспечивать их доступность».
7. «Капитал финансовых организаций-доноров должен дополнять частный капитал, а не соперничать с ним».
8. «Основная проблема состоит в нехватке надежных высокоразвитых организаций и профессиональных менеджеров». Финансовым организациям-донорам следует уделить особое внимание увеличению эффективности своей деятельности.
9. Наличие потолка процентных ставок практически лишает организации, занимающиеся микрофинансированием, возможности покрытия издержек малообеспеченного населения, что фактически заставляет последних отказываться от кредитов.
10. Организации, занимающиеся микрофинансированием, должны оценивать и предавать гласности результаты своей деятельности – как финансовой, так и социальной.
Микрофинансирование, к тому же, отличается от благотворительности. Беспомощным и нуждающимся семьям, не способным собрать необходимые суммы для погашения кредита, лучше предоставить безвозмездные ссуды. Такая ситуация, например, может возникнуть после стихийного бедствия или же в зоне военных действий.
3. Полемика вокруг аспектов микрофинансирования
По ряду ключевых аспектов микрофинансирования ведутся непрекращающиеся споры.
Финансисты и финансовые доноры, являющиеся представителями «благотворительного микрофинансирования», часто выступают за сужение границ сферы микрофинансирования до уровня предоставления займов лишь на производственные нужды – такие, как открытие или расширение микропередприятия. Представители же «частного сектора» микрофинансирования отвечают на это тем, что ввести это ограничение невозможно, во-первых, потому, что деньги обладают свойством легко перетекать из одной сферы в другую4, а во-вторых, по той причине, что богатые люди не должны определять, на какие цели малообеспеченным людям следует расходовать свои деньги.
