Pro-poor growth: concepts and measurement with country case studies

.Poverty, inequality, pro-poor, Korea, Thailand, Vi

How does a flexible programme compare with the regular ones?

PRIFPRI3; ISIMTI

Credit for agricultural development

Access to financial services is critical for agricultural development. By “access to financial services” we mean access to credit, savings, payments, and insurance. Such a broad measure of access is called “financial inclusion” in the recent development literature. Financial inclusion is also defined as a measure of an individual’s and a business’s access to use of financial services to save, borrow, make payments, and buy insurance to mitigate risk in production and consumption (Demirguc-Kunt and Klapper 2012; Demirguc-Kunt et al. 2015).1 Access to financial services facilitates an individual’s and a business’s day-to-day transactions and helps them manage everything from investment plans to unexpected emergencies. “Financial access” means access to outlets where people save, borrow, pay bills, and buy insurance, in order to initiate and expand businesses, to invest in education or health, to manage risk, and to weather shocks. All these activities induced by financial inclusion lead to higher productivity, raising income, consumption, nutrition, and education, and thus achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals (World Bank 2018).PRIFPRI4DG

The dynamics of microfinance in Bangladesh

This book using household long panel survey of 1991/92-2010/11 from Bangladesh addresses some of criticisms—including whether pushing microfinance has made it redundant as a tool for poverty reduction—while investigating whether it still matters for the poor after two decades of extensive growth. The book’s findings confirm the positive effects of continued borrowing from a microfinance program.PRIFPRI5; C Improving markets and tradeMTI

Efficacy of some plant extracts on the mycelial growth of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides

The anti fungal effects of some plants extracts namely tobacco leaf, keora seed, keora, mahogoni, gaint indian milky weed, garlic and ginger at different concentrations (30%, 40%, 50%, 60% and 70%) on the growth and development of C. gloeosporioides, causal agent of anthracnose of mango were evaluated. Radial growth of C. gloeosporioides was recorded. The growth inhibition increase with the increase of concentration of all the plant extracts. Highest mycelial growth inhibition (74.35%) was observed in case of garlic extracts at 70% concentration. Garlic extract at 50% and 60% concentration were also effective than other treatments

Efficacy of some plant extracts on the mycelial growth of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides

The anti fungal effects of some plants extracts namely tobacco leaf, keora seed, keora, mahogoni, gaint indian milky weed, garlic and ginger at different concentrations (30%, 40%, 50%, 60% and 70%) on the growth and development of C. gloeosporioides, causal agent of anthracnose of mango were evaluated. Radial growth of C. gloeosporioides was recorded. The growth inhibition increase with the increase of concentration of all the plant extracts. Highest mycelial growth inhibition (74.35%) was observed in case of garlic extracts at 70% concentration. Garlic extract at 50% and 60% concentration were also effective than other treatments

Microcredit in Viet Nam: Does it matter?

With 7 million borrowers and US$5.4 billion in outstanding loans in 2012, the Viet Nam Bank for Social Policies (VBSP) is the largest single microcredit lender in the world. We measure the impact of VBSP lending and seek to answer the question of whether continued subsidies to the bank, which amount to about 2 percent of the value of its loans, are justified. VBSP grew particularly rapidly between 2004 and 2008, when its share of total loans in Viet Nam rose from 10 to 27 percent, and by 2008 an estimated two-fifths of its loans were ostensibly used for directly productive purposes. Using data from a panel of 1,846 rural households interviewed in 2004, 2006, and 2008 as part of the Viet Nam Household Living Standards Survey, we estimated the impact of VBSP lending on consumption and income per capita, as well as self-employment earnings. Both an intention-to-treat model with fixed effects, and a quantity-of-credit model with fixed effects and using instrumental variables, show significant or close to significant impacts of VBSP microloans on consumption and income, but our data do not have enough power to determine whether this mainly works via agricultural or nonagricultural self-employment income. Without VBSP, the rural poverty rate would have been 0.7 percentage points higher in 2008 than it actually was. The subsidy is likely justified, given the evidence and scale of the positive impact of VBSP loans on consumption spending and the concentration of benefits among poorer households in Viet Nam.Non-PRIFPRI1; C Improving markets and tradeMTI

Evaluating the impact of Egyptian Social Fund for Development programmes

Since its inception in 1991, the Egyptian Social Fund for Development (SFD) has spent about US$600 million supporting microcredit, and financing community development and infrastructure. Applying propensity-score matching using household survey data for 2004/05, this paper finds that SFD programmes have had clear and measurable effects, in the expected direction, for the six programmes considered here: education, health, potable water, sanitation, roads, and microcredit. SFD road projects generate benefits that, by some estimates, exceed their costs, as do health and potable water interventions; this is less evident for programmes in education and sanitation. SFD support for microcredit is strongly pro-poor; the other programmes analysed here appear to have a more modest pro-poor orientation.impact evaluation, Egypt, social fund, propensity score matching, microcredit,