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Tuesday, July 18, 2006
MFIs upgrade services, goods to help more
Microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Mindanao are upgrading their products and services to penetrate hard to reach areas (HRA) on the island.
Jeffrey R. Ordoñez, executive director of the Mindanao Microfinance Council (MMC) during the workshop on “Hard to Reach Areas” at the Waterfront Insular Hotel Friday, said they needed to reach the HRAs to also provide access to credit for livelihood.
The MMC and the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) collaborated to assist the Mindanao MFIs through capability-building in order to upgrade management skills and other related tasks that will be needed in expanding their reach to the lower market in the upland communities and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Armm).
“Training and capability- building and improving on some policies to the advantage of the MFIs are areas that need to be addressed,” he said.
Policies
He said there are some policies at the local level that need lobbying to make it friendlier to the MFIs even as he said that the Philippines, as a whole, has good policy environment compared to other countries.
Funding, he said is not a problem because it is always available, it is just a matter of tapping it.
Ordonez said that in the whole Armm area, there are only about four MFIs operating basically because many MFIs have the perception that it is difficult to operate in the area.
He said only one percent of the MFIs target clients are served compared to those outside of Armm where they served about 25 percent.
“They are still not able to understand their culture and these aspects also have to be learned,” he said.
Reach out
Ordonez said that once the MFIs are able to develop the right strategies, operating in the HRA could proceed as they aim to reach out to 600,000 more clients.
He said with the series of workshops and training courses, MMC-AIM hope to develop the Mindanao MFI’s capability in serving more clients.
They also want to enable Mindanao MFIs to elevate the state of their low-income clients and transform them to being mere consumers of microfinance services into partners of wealth creation.
The MMC already has 400,000 clients as of 2005 and Ordoñez is optimistic they will hit their one million target by 2010. (Sun.Star Davao)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (July 18, 2006 issue)
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