CGAP Annual Report 2010

2010 Highlights

• In January, CGAP weighed in on discussions about the impact of microcredit, publishing an analysis of the benefits of microfinance in “Does Microcredit Really Help Poor People?”
• Financial Access 2010, a joint CGAP/World Bank Group report, showed that access to financial services had continued to grow in 2009, despite the financial crisis.
• Randomized controlled trials on two pilots in the CGAP–Ford Foundation Graduation Program in India provided results that were particularly promising.
• In April, CGAP hosted a virtual conference, “Responsible Finance: Making It Work in Microfinance.”
• CGAP made the business case for savings, arguing in an Occasional Paper published in September that total client profitability made good business sense.
• In October, CGAP made an impassioned plea for the microfinance industry to examine the empirical evidence on over-indebtedness: to come to a common definition and agree on indicators to measure what levels of over-indebtedness exist.
• CGAP added G2P projects in Ethiopia and Pakistan, where governments have large expanding social protection programs, taking advantage of rapidly growing mobile telephone networks.
• By the end of the year, the unfortunate turn of events in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh took center stage. In between, we saw the SKS IPO, and much debate about different approaches to delivering services, high interest rates, and the various facets of commercial microfinance.