The study serves to clarify doubts on the potential of commercial microcredit as a strategic vehicle of implementing of small-scale biogas plants in Sri Lanka, as an alternative to subsidy-based process. The quantified sum of unsubsidized microloan interest born by the biogas users in a modeled situation of maximum potential of the biogas sector financed through microfinance institutions is compared with national technology savings on a macro level. The analysis concludes that an economic justification for the microfinance-fuelled implementation of small-scale biodigesters employing a market-based approach does exist. Annual savings on macroeconomic level surpass the annual cost expressed as a sum of unsubsidized interest. The study furthermore proposes a three-party credit contract, which prevents credit defaults caused by the lack of customary after-sales care by integrating the provision of service providers into a contractual agreement with both the user and the financing source, thus assuming part of credit responsibility.

Since the beginnings of modern microfinance in the 70s, the industry continued to grow rapidly, albeit fueled by dubious assumptions related to market potential. Boosted by Nobel Prize award, thousands of new MFIs are currently being created in the lure of market potential, estimated at one and half billion of unattended clients. The estimates, however, differ drastically and there is no wide scale assessment available deducing the unattainable market strata, detrimental to sustainable microfinance, from the inflated estimates. The exaggerations are to be denoted as unrealistic and excluded from the global estimates. This study intends to quantify the market wrongly assumed to form part of the microfinance market and to deduce the real size of the potential global microfinance sector, appraising the size of the market that should not be counted into the integral demand, since it is unsustainable or harmful to the players involved.

Abstract. Microfinance services are essential tools of formalization of shadow economics

Turkey harbours one of the greatest untapped microfinance markets in the world. Despite its enormous dormant potential, few studies were undertaken in order to potrait the socio-economic character of its main protagonist: enterprising mother operating in the suburbs of urban and semiurban environment. The study summarizes result of field research carried out by team of researchers from Czech University of Life Sciences and models a credit mannequin, profiling the average Turkish microfinance client in suburban areas of Central Anatolia. The assemblage enables to depict genuine relationships of mainstream clientele towards selected topics, reaching better understanding of nature and particularities of the Turkish microfinance market and drawing conclusions on its further development.

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