Date: Thursday, October 18th, 2008, 12:30-2:00pm
Location: IFC Building, Washington DC
Organized by: Insurance for the Poor team, FPD, World Bank; and South Asia Finance and Private Sector Unit, World Bank
Speaker: Vijay Kumar, CEO, Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, Hyderabad, India (View his presentation here)
Moderator: Priya Basu, Lead Financial Economist, South Asia Finance and Private Sector Department, World Bank
In just 8 years, over 8 million women in self-help groups (SHGs) in Andhra Pradesh, India have:
- mobilized cumulative savings in excess of US$325 million,
- generated an internal group corpus in excess of US$700 million; and
- obtained almost US$3 billion in loans from formal financial institutions.
Efforts by the government of Andhra Pradesh, with support from the World Bank, are creating a viable financial sector that serves the poor with savings, credit, and insurance products that help poor households cope with external shocks to their income. In FY 2007-08 total credit flow to the women's SHGs in Andhra Pradesh amount to US$1.3 billion and in FY2008-09 total credit from commercial banks is estimated to exceed US$2.0 billion. In addition, more than 12 million SHG members and their spouses have life and loan protection insurance coverage.
The seminar will address: (a) the investments made by the World Bank-supported Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project (APRPRP) “Indira Kranti Patham”; (b) the growth in financial services targeting the rural poor since the inception of the project in 2000; (c) the total financial inclusion (TFI) agenda being pursued by SERP; and (d) technology innovations being piloted to improve the transparency and cost structure of financial transactions to the poor.
The Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty is an independent, autonomous society registered under the Societies Act to implement the World Bank supported Rural Poverty Reduction Project in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The rural poverty reduction project was rolled out two-phases covering the entire State by 2003-04.
The Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project aims to enable rural poor and their organizations to improve livelihoods and quality of life. The project supports development and empowerment of self managed grass root level institutions of the poor rural women including self help groups and their federations.
The APRPRP has mobilized more than eight million women into about 700,000 plus self-help groups (SHGs) A typical SHG comprises of 10-15 women from the poorest of the poor and the poor. The members meet once a week, collect savings and maintain books of accounts. SHGs are then federated into Village Organizations (VOs) at village level., federated into 28,282 village organizations (VOs), 1100 sub-district organizations (Mandal Samakhyas) and 26 District Organizations (ZS).
