An NGO-MF1 Approach to Microfinance: Its Socio-economic Impacts to its Poor Micro-Entrepreneur Clients

Abstract

Poverty in the Philippines has been unmanageably escalating through time. As an economic and social dilemma, this issue deserves an immediate intervention. Through the year’s, it can be deduced that most measures being introduced to combat poverty usually delay the benefits to the poor. As income inequality worsens, poverty incidence rises. Never attending to narrowing the country’s income gap, more poor people lack access to financial services due to wealth concentration among few. In effect, people living in poverty stay trapped in their conditions as they lack means to uplift their quality of life. Socio-economic investments should be scaled up to assist the poor, and this can be in the form of Microfmance. Managed mostly by private firms and regulated by market forces, microfmance is a tool to enlarge the economic access of the poor by means of providing micro-loans, micro-savings and micro-insurances. Through capital provision, one can possibly reduce his economic and social vulnerability by engaging in micro-business. With diverse types of Microfmance Institutions, NGOs are one of the most active in servicing the poor. This paper discusses the socio-economic impacts of Microfinance among ABS- CBN Bayan Foundation Inc.’s poor micro-entrepreneur clients. Since microentrepreneurs are said to be the ‘economically active poor’, they can serve as the most lucrative and less risky market for Microfinance Institutions. Measures of improvement are derived from the respondents’ changes in income and saving patterns before and after their membership with the mentioned NGO-Microfinance Institution. Social transformation of the beneficiaries is also tackled by considering positive changes on selected attitude and values indicators. This study also assesses the NGO’s sustainability and market performance by means of looking closely to its present Microfinance operations, outreach and development prospects. Most importantly, this research examines the effectiveness of Microfinance in poverty reduction.