Project Objective & Brief Description: |
The project’s primary goal is to improve access of population and small business to finance and credit resources by developing microfinance services and raising financial culture of population. Project objectives:
1. To develop a Microfinance Development Concept and propose specialised legislation on microfinance.
To achieve it a Council for Microfinance Development will be established within the project. The Council will coordinate and consolidate the efforts of various national and international organisations on microfinance development in Belarus. The Council will supervise the elaboration of the Concept of Microfinance Development, which will present a comprehensive and consistent vision of the future of microfinance in Belarus, lay the ground for the development of an adequate legal framework to guide the work of various microfinance organisations, propose a mechanism to coordinate the efforts towards establishing a functioning microfinance system undertaken by various stakeholders, including the government, National Bank, the banking system, enterprise support organisations, finance and credit institutions and other interested parties.
2. To improve capacity of the banking and non-banking sectors in microfinance
Banks, non-banking organisations and other interested parties will benefit from training workshops involving experts from microfinance training centres in Russia and other European states. The participants will get acquainted with the international experience of microfinance programs (specific features, approaches, tendencies), modern products and services, methods of microloan prompt analyses, risk assessment and management (including introduction of track performance indicators, quarter reporting to the MIX Market, social performance monitoring in the performance measurement system, including exposure to client assessment indicators, client scoring and the social focus of microfinance organisations), streamline procedures and learning to reduce costs for poor clients.
3. To improve public awareness of microfinance and financial literacy levels.
To support this objective, the project will organise the adaptation and teaching of a course titled “Planning your future”, developed by the Microfinance Centre for Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS (MFC). This course, tested in Poland and the Russian Federation, is supported by a collection of training materials in five issue areas1) long-term financial planning in the household; 2) systematic savings, 3) sensible borrowing and prevention of financial crises, 4) finance organisations and services, 5) negotiating loans from a finance organisation. |
