Suchergebnisse

Over the last thirty years or so, microfinance has risen to become one of the most high-profile policies to address poverty and under-development. in developing and transition countries. It is beloved of rock stars, royalty, movie stars, high profile politicians and `trouble-shooting` economists, such as Jeffrey Sachs and Hernando de Soto. Its most famous pioneer from Bangladesh, Dr Muhammad Yunus, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Microfinance is consistently rated as one of the most important innovations to have come along this past forty years or so. Dr Bateman believes, however, that microfinance doesn`t actually work. His argument is that, if you look more closely, the case for microfinance has actually been largely built on a desire to advance a particular free market ideology, on hype and egregious half-truths, and - latterly - on the Wall Street-style greed, deception and individual self-interest of those actually promoting and working in microfinance. Dr Bateman shows why many of the most fundamental building blocks of microfinance are largely myths, before going on to demonstrate that microfinance actually undermines the institutional foundations required for sustainable development and poverty reduction.

This article argues that the microfinance model that arrived in Latin America in the 1970s has proven, as elsewhere around the world, to be an almost wholly destructive economic and social policy intervention. Centrally, I argue that the microfinance model is responsible for embedding and giving continued impetus to an adverse 'anti-development' trajectory in Latin America's economies, one that has progressively helped to de-industrialise, infantilise and informalise the overall local economic and social structure. Until recently, the extent and precise nature of this 'anti-development' trajectory has been ignored for fear of undermining and delegitimizing the global microfinance model and, with it, the dominant political-economic philosophy - neoliberalism - that essentially gave life to it. Effective local industrial policies and 'pro-development' local financial institutions are now urgently required in Latin America to build genuinely sustainable and equitable solidarity-driven local economies from the bottom up.