Who Can Reach the Hardcore Poor?

Abstract

Financial services for the poor are well established in Bangladesh through NGOs, Cooperatives, Public Sectors Programmes and Grmeen Bank. Bangladesh is now teeming with more than 1000 NGOs, who are supported by overseas funds and have taken up microfinance as core activities. These NGOs have made a rapid progress in the coverage of Rural and Urban poor. Although a number of studies showed a positive impact of microfinance NGOs to alleviate poverty, it has experienced and argued by some institutions and research findings that these MFIs- NGOs have not been fully successful to reach the hardcore poor. The objective of the paper is to find out the reasons behind the argument. This paper will present limitations of these microfinance NGOs in the way of reaching hardcore poor and will try to provide an alternative to get rid of this situation.