Financial Services to the Poor: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Microfinance

The role of Islamic microfinance in poverty alleviation and environmental awareness in Pasuruan, East Java, Indonesia

“…The biggest contribution of microfinance has been showing that lending to the poor is feasible and that keeping good repayment records is achievable when institutions are appropriately designed (Hamada 2010).…”

“…The role of microfinance in bridging the gap between clients and financial institutions is considered an effective method of alleviating poverty (Hamada 2010;Imai and Azam 2010). Both formal and informal MFIs in the research area provided various financial services (Table 5.7).…”

Islamic Microfinance and Poverty Alleviation Program: Preliminary Research Findings From Indonesia

“…If this feature runs well, regardless the size of the economic scale, it will generate value added in economic activities (Hamada, 2010;Wijono, 2005).…”

“…In this new policy, World Bank (2000) promotes actively to a wide-ranging approach including "promoting opportunity, facilitating empowerment, and enhancing security". Hamada (2010) asserts that the microfinance institution is a feasible financial institution for this purpose as it provides a viable access to the poor to financial resources and to facilitate community empowerment. Microfinance can serve a bridge the obstacles of poor in accessing formal financial institutions with more simple procedures and requirement compare to commercial banks.…”

“…The successful story of Grameen Bank with outstanding performance to achieve in providing loans to 7.9 million borrowers, of which 97% are women and with the repayment rate is 98% become magnitudes in many studies of economics and poverty reduction agenda (Becker, 2011;Hamada, 2010;Zeller & Meyer, 2002).…”