I am interested in starting a non profit type of microcredit operation in western part of China. Would like to talk to you if possible. I am starting from stand still mode and need a lot of help.

Peter Fang

There’s quite a bit of action in Inner Mongolia. As you probably know, Standard Chartered has opened up a village bank there and has started offering collateral free loans. Though, my understanding is that along with the rest of the “rural” financing that’s happening, most of these banks are targeting SMEs, not the poverty alleviation type of loans, which are CFPA, Accion, and Grameen’s focus.

As part of my Council of Alumni for Social Enterprise (CASE) fellowship I have written up a case study on CFPA Microfinance. The case looks at some of the challenges CFPA Microfinance faced during its transition from a “project” to a true MFI and what they did about it. I will co-teach the case with Professor Dan Rosen next Tuesday at Columbia-SIPA’s China’s New Marketplace course. I will also have a brown bag session on this case later this semester for the wider community as part of a Microfinance Working Group event. Feel free to join if you are in the NYC area.

Not to sidetrack, Inner Mongolia has received considerable attention even prior to rural finance reforms, and I hear Holhot is a hot bed of small money lending similar to Wenzhou. I’d be most interested to see any case studies examining their MF model and if they can provide lessons to rest of MF in China.

Cheers, SA