Increasing access to rural finance is often the last frontier for financial sector development in developing countries. Financial institutions aiming to operate in rural areas in these countries usually have to deal with high transaction costs, low population densities, remote areas, and a heavy...

Heavily indebted low-income countries benefited from significant debt relief over the past decade. Under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), assistance of about $117 billion in nominal terms had been committed to 35 HIPC as of...