“SKS Microfinance, India's largest lender to the poor, aims to raise about $350m this month by selling a 21.6 per cent stake in an initial public offering expected to spark a wave of listings by equity-strapped Indian microfinance companies.”While the high rates of repayment and community structure present a real opportunity for microfinance institutions to be profitable (or at least self-sustaining), the profit-maximization pressures (higher interest rates and lower loan qualification standards) that accompany a public listing carry the potential to undermine the social-entrepreneurship microfinance goals (Issues: Social Entrepreneurship, p189):
“Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning founder of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank - the world's most famous microlender - has criticised the commercialisation of the industry, saying profit-oriented microlenders are little different to the loan sharks they once set out to replace.”The possibility for corruption quickly arises as the pursuit of profit spreads across the sub-units of the organization:
“SKS, which says it has 7m borrowers in 19 Indian States, also plans to boost its revenues through alliances with large companies to distribute their products - such as mobile phones and water purifiers - even as it provides rural consumers with the microloans needed to buy the items.”The article in the second url below shows the success and rapid growth of microfinance organizations, such as SKS, in India:
“For the last three years, outstanding loan portfolios of Indian micro-finance institutions have grown by 65 per cent annually, according to the World Bank, with total loans of about $2.5bn to about 22.6m households.”As well as reinforcing the threats:
“Typical loans average between $200 and $250, and carry rates of about 28 per cent - lower than money-lenders, albeit still expensive when compared with commercial bank rates.”Take care
David
Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders in a Global Environment (2e)
© Sage Publications, 2011
http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr2e/
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SKS Microfinance plans to raise $350m in IPO
By James Fontanella-Khan in Mumbai and Amy Kazmin in New Delhi
418 words
21 July 2010
Financial Times
Asia Ed1
17
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1879f6e4-9422-11df-a3fe-00144feab49a.html
New networks help ease debt dilemma
Kazmin, Amy
603 words
21 July 2010
Financial Times
Asia Ed1
17
http://presscuttings.ft.com/presscuttings/s/3/viewPdf/37730595
