Reaching 100 million of India's rural poor with savings and credit by 2008: This is NABARD's goal through its SHG banking program, leveraging the strength of the formal banking system and the flexibility of informal self-help groups in providing adequate financial services to the rural poor....

Why does IFAD need rural finance guidelines? With its exclusive emphasis on rural poverty alleviation, IFAD enjoys a competitive advantage over other development agencies, and should strengthen its role by providing support for the development of rural finance as an important instrument. The...

Linking banks and self-help groups has been a major program of German development cooperation since the mid-1980s. Given the involvement of GTZ in SHG banking and the outreach of that program in India, the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has proposed to study the...

There are two outstanding aspects to Nabard’s Linking Banks and Self-Help Groups: with an outreach to 500,000 SHGs and a population of 40m rural poor, it is the largest non-directed microsavings & microcredit program in the developing world; and its bank lending rates – fluctuating at market...