In India, commercial banks, both public and private, are required to direct a large chunk of their net credit to designated “priority sectors” seen as having a positive impact on India’s economy, and wider society – to ensure funds flow into areas the government deems important, but might otherwise be neglected. These sectors – designated by the Reserve Bank of India – currently include broad areas of agriculture, small scale industries,...

Time magazine picked him as one of 100 people shaping our world. Today, he’s held responsible for bringing an exciting, inspirational business into disrepute. Oh, and his wife says he beat her and snatched their son. There could not be a more controversial torchbearer than Vikram Akula for an industry as quintessentially Indian as microfinance, the business of providing the poor with loans, as small as R5,000, secured not with...

Developed countries at the 15th Conference had committed themselves to providing around $30 billion for 2010-12 The fund is for supporting developing countries' climate efforts No clarity on how donors will channel the fast-start funds Developed countries are failing to meet the funding pledges that they made at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen last December to support developing countries' climate efforts. At the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP-15) in Copenhagen, developed countries...

More public private partnerships are needed to create opportunities for the rural population India might have created its mark in the services sector — especially in information technology — on the global map, but the development of the rural sector still has a lot of ground to cover. Discussing how to innovate rural entrepreneurship towards employment at the India Economic Summit, various speakers called for increased public private partnerships to create...

Amid the heat and dust over high interest rates charged by microfinance institutions and reports of coercive recovery methods by some lenders in Andhra Pradesh, MFIs in eastern India are trying to strike a more cordial note with borrowers by lowering interest rates. At least three MFIs based out of Kolkata are on the verge of slashing lending rates by nearly 500 basis points to 19.1% per annum, on reducing balance...