Monitoring Survey of Savings Groups in Vientiane Municipality with Special Reference to Surplus Funds (プロジェクト報告)

Delivering financial services to the rural poor in developing countries is considered a costly business, entailing high transaction costs and a perceived high risk of default.Under such conditions, microfinance institutions (MFIs) are regarded as useful vehicles for extending loans to the rural poor.A large part of the literature on MFIs has centered on their effectiveness in poverty alleviation from the viewpoint of a poverty-lending or credit-led approach.The most notable MFI of this type is Bangladesh's Grameen Bank.The poverty lending approach, however, has invited a twofold criticism focused on the financial unviability and limited outreach of MFIs.Following Vogel's (1984) reference to "the forgotten half of rural finance," MFIs generally do not provide savings services mainly due to the ill-considered belief that the rural deprived are too poor to save and thus do not respond to savings products.This absence of savings services jeopardizes the financial viability and sustainability of MFIs.Indeed, most MFI programs incur large loan losses and require frequent capital injections from external organizations.The extensive presence of rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) in rural areas of developing countries, however, suggests that