User:Safabsr/Impact of microcredit

Debt traps, suicides and group pressure
In 2008, economist Jonathan Morduch of New York University noted there were still major gaps in research on microcredit, such as on debt traps and the use of microcredits for consumption.

There has been much criticism of the high interest rates charged to borrowers. The real average portfolio yield cited by the 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. Interest rates charged by the Mexican Banco Compartamos on their micro-loans reached 86% per year while it sold stocks in the stock market in 2007.

In India microfinance institutions have been criticized for creating small-debt traps for the poor in Andhra Pradesh with high interest rates and coercive methods of recovery. Villagers often did not know the interest that they were being charged and were not aware of the consequences of taking multiple loans as they take the second loan to clear the first loan. In 2010 aggressive lending by microcredit institutions has been blamed for over 80 suicides in Andhra Pradesh. Bangladesh's former Finance and Planning Minister M. Saifur Rahman charged in 2005 that some microfinance institutions use excessive interest rates. A 2008 study in Bangladesh showed that some loan recipients sink into a cycle of debt, using a microloan from one organization to meet interest obligations from another. Field officers who are in a position of power locally and are remunerated based on repayment rates sometimes use coercive and even violent tactics to collect installments on the microloans.

'''Private banks and large MNCs have become involved in microfinance. With large corporations investing, local MFIs are under pressure to deliver high returns each quarter; this comes at the expense of borrowers. Foreign and corporate capital investment take advantage of emerging and developing economies across Asia and Africa, introducing new forms of collateral requirements; individuals borrowers sometimes end up in even more debilitating debt and poverty than when they started.'''

'''The Cambodian market offers a key example of such problematic and debilitating debt traps. Throughout the early 1990s, Cambodia began as a success story for microfinance in the developing world. By the early 2000s, however, the situation deteriorated until “the typical loan amount [to] now exceed the average annual household income and require land-based collateral”. The introduction of land-based collateral has driven thousands of borrowers to sell their property at depreciating rates compared to actual property value in order to pay off their accumulating debts. Companies and stakeholders, on the other hand, benefit from borrower losses. In 2020, as the pandemic ravaged Cambodia’s economy, “six of the country’s eight biggest microfinance companies posted record earnings,” while loanees were driven into devastating amounts of debt due to skyrocketing interest rates. As the market has evolved, companies have deviated from the initial goal of providing loans to fund and develop income-generating opportunities to offering credit for daily living costs and prior loan repayments.'''

Some microfinance institutions lend only to groups of women. This practice puts loan recipients under pressure, because all women are liable for the loans of the other women in the group and each member can only obtain a new loan if each member has repaid the previous loan.

Muhammad Yunus argues that microfinance institutions that charge more than 15% above their long-term operating costs should face penalties.