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India: Government to Reintroduce Microfinance Bill
January 28, 2010

New Delhi, January 28, 2010 (Indianexpress) - The much-waited Micro Finance Bill is likely to see the light of day during the upcoming Budget Session as the government is doing the groundwork to reintroduce it. “Micro finance is growing at a fast pace. However, it is neither regulated nor supervised. A Bill will give more legitimacy to the sector. We are trying to complete the work and reintroduce the Bill in the upcoming budget session of Parliament,” said an official in the ministry of finance.

The Bill, which seeks to regulate the growing micro finance sector, was originally introduced in Parliament in 2007. However, it lapsed due to the dissolution of Parliament before the elections. The Bill assumes a lot of importance since the sector is growing at a rapid pace in terms of both client reach and loan portfolio. For the last three years, the sector has been growing at almost 52 per cent year-on-year in terms of the client base. According to ‘The Bharat Micro Finance Report — Quick Data 2009’, there are 233 microfinance institutions (MFIs) reporting to Sa-dhan today. The client outreach as on March 31, 2009 was more than two crore and the loan outstanding stands at Rs 12,027.65 crore.

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