Parece que no son tan maravillosos, al fin y al cabo…aunque me quedo con lo que se dice al final: a lo mejor lo que pasa es que no deberíamos esperar tanto de ellos.
Microfinance fans should not feel too defensive about these mildly positive results, especially when microfinance itself has passed a market test by growing very rapidly, often without subsidies. All such trials are context-specific and have other limits: the Manila study targeted marginal borrowers, while in the Hyderabad study, Spandana was not the only microfinance lender in town.
The reason for the backlash is obvious: microfinance was supposed not just to be a useful financial product, but to emancipate women, create millions of entrepreneurs and get rid of stubborn stains on your collar. Such claims were always going to be difficult to justify – even if donors tend to lap them up in the search for the next development panacea.
David Roodman, a microfinance expert at the Center for Global Development, sums it up well: “Suppose microfinance is not having much average impact on poverty, but is giving millions of people a modicum of greater control over their lives … is that so bad?” Other serious studies are in the pipeline. If microfinance is to thrive under the microscope, perhaps its practitioners should establish more realistic expectations.
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