-Business Standard Borrower cannot be charged any amount not been explicitly mentioned in a factsheet, says regulator. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday released its final guidelines for microfinance loans, lifting an interest cap and allowing companies to have a board-approved policy to price for such lending. The RBI will continue checking that Microfinance institutions do not charge usurious rates. The regulator said each entity has to disclose pricing related information...

-Frontline.thehindu.com The RBI’s proposal to loosen regulations for private lenders in the microfinance space will have disastrous consequences for the poor, especially women in rural areas. Microfinance, a category of financial services aimed at serving people from low-income households who lack access to conventional banking credit and services, was originally designed by international finance capital institutions such as the World Bank as an alternative to providing direct concessional credit to the poor—which...

-Newsclick.in Earlier, the government stopped the release of the NSSO report on unemployment for 2017-18 and the sixth Labour Bureau annual employment-unemployment survey. Both showed an unprecedented rise in job losses. New Delhi: For the third time, the Narendra Modi government has stopped the release of government data on jobs created in the country before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The Indian Express reported on March 14, 2019 that a survey by the...

-The Hindu Business Line Roy tracks how microfinance, despite its blemishes, has empowered the unbanked in the country For the poor in rural India, till not very long ago, credit meant the unscrupulous mahajans who roamed the villages with wads of cash. Dime a dozen Bollywood movies had depicted the wily moneylender who not just ripped off the hapless creditors, but who was also cruel enough to grab their movable and immovable...

A recent report by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) enlightens one about the state of farmers' income and indebtedness in 2015-16. Entitled NABARD All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey 2016-17 – in short NAFIS 2016-17 – the report says that between 2012-13 and 2015-16 the average monthly income for agricultural households grew by around 39 percent. One may recall that the Key Indicators of Situation Assessment Survey...