State Lenders’ Meet for Microfinance Industry held in Kolkata
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Kolkata: Association of Microfinance Institutions – West Bengal (AMFI-WB), a State Level Federation of Microfinance Institutions in West Bengal, on Wednesday organized the State Lenders’ Meet for Microfinance Industry in Kolkata.
The Bankers Meet was held to discuss partnerships, tie-up and discuss the opportunities that have opened-up through new regulations, digital technology and new models of funding for financial inclusion. Besides highlighting the services of the Microfinance and Banking sector, the conference also created awareness about the industry and its stakeholders through discussions at the Lenders’ meet.
Microfinance Sector has always been at the forefront of promoting inclusive growth through microfinance focusing on the underserved, mainly women, ensuring positive change in their economic status as also improving their quality of life through income enhancement and other socially relevant interventions. Thereby, the sector has an important role in supporting and building the unorganized sector, creating employment opportunities and contributing significantly to the nation’s GDP.
Since the focus is majorly on funding women, it also plays an important role in women empowerment. Microfinance also champions gender equality by providing women with access to financial services. As a catalyst for change, microfinance intertwines financial empowerment with social empowerment, paving the way towards a more inclusive and sustainable future.
Microfinance sector has been playing a significant role since pandemic in supporting the base of the pyramid to bring back normalization. This has been through restructuring of loans, relief on interest and principle. The sector continued to provide funding support to rehabilitate their business and bring them back to normalization.
The sector has also displayed its strong resilience and continued to honour payment commitments to all its stakeholders, despite serious headwinds post pandemic. The Government and Regulators, during and post-pandemic, created an enabling environment through various positive policy interventions that includes RBI’s revised regulatory framework, Government Guaranteed funding, interest subvention making the sector stronger.
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