MICROFINANCE 미얀마 Biz 정보

NGOs interested in microfinance licenses

 

World Vision, an international Christian aid organization, is currently attempting to transform itself from an NGO into a licensed Microfinance Institution (MFI) allowing it to lend money to impoverished communities. According to Mr. Neal Youngquist, Managing Director of the World Vision, the organization aims for its MFI arm to operate as a separate entity under a commercial license which would allow it to take part in Myanmar’s emerging finance sector.
U Win Aung, General Manager at the Supervisory Committee of the Myan-mar Microfinance State Enterprise (MMSE) said the committee has not yet received any formal application from World Vision though they are aware that World Vision is interested in obtaining a license. He added that a total of 166 firms have been granted microfinance licenses after the Microfinance Law was endorsed in November 2011. However, he refused to reveal the estimated time frame for an NGO to obtain an MFI license. According to Mr. Youngquist, World Vision initially had requested to transform its NGO license into a commercial one, but was advised to apply for a new commercial li-cense as this transformation is not possible. Although most of the estab-lished MFIs in Myanmar are either government-backed or NGOs, a number of foreign firms have recently entered the market. Whether to allow domes-tic MFIs to borrow money from domestic or international lenders is still be-ing discussed at the Ministry of Finance.
Other NGOs are also attempting to form MFIs in the belief that profit making activities are better suited to an MFI as opposed to an NGO. As a commercial institution, MFIs can receive equity investments from both domestic and international lenders to increase the size of their loan portfolios. Myanmar has about 2.8 million MFI clients bor-rowing about US $242 million, according to a report by the International Finance Corporation released in January. As the report further elaborates, state-owned Myanmar Agricultural Development Bank has the largest domestic microfinance loan portfolio of US $86 million whereas the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)’s micro-finance arm PACT stands as the largest NGO player in the industry, with loans of US $29.5 million. There are a number of other MFIs operating in the country under NGO licenses such as Proximity Designs, Save the Children, and the French NGO Gret.