Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12323/4613
Full metadata record
DC FieldValueLanguage
dc.contributor.authorMalik, Kashif, etc.-
dc.date.accessioned2020-07-15T08:53:14Z-
dc.date.available2020-07-15T08:53:14Z-
dc.date.issued2020-05-04-
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12323/4613-
dc.description.abstractThe COVID-19 pandemic threatens lives and livelihoods, and, with that, has created immediate challenges for institutions that serve affected communities. We focus on implications for local microfinance institutions in Pakistan, a country with a mature microfinance sector, serving a large number of households. The institutions serve populations poorly-served by traditional commercial banks, helping customers invest in microenterprises, save, and maintain liquidity. We report results from ‘rapid response’ phone surveys of about 1,000 microenterprise owners, a survey of about 200 microfinance loan officers, and interviews with regulators and senior representatives of microfinance institutions. We ran these surveys starting about a week after the country went into lockdown to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. We find that, on average, week-on-week sales and household income both fell by about 90%. Households’ primary immediate concern in early April became how to secure food. As a result, 70% of the sample of current microfinance borrowers reported that they could not repay their loans; loan officers anticipated a repayment rate of just 34% in April 2020. We build from the results to argue that COVID-19 represents a crisis for microfinance in low-income communities. It is also a chance to consider the future of microfinance, and we suggest insights for policy reform.en_US
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.relation.ispartofseriesOxford Review of Economic Policy;-
dc.subjectCOVID-19en_US
dc.titleCOVID-19 and the Future of Microfinance: Evidence and Insights from Pakistanen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
Appears in Collections:Papers for Press

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
COVID-19.pdf458.71 kBAdobe PDFView/Open


Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.