CGAP Annual Report 2005

2005 Highlights

  • Following on a 2004 CGAP review of 227 formal financial institutions, ranging from institutions with established microfinance services to those with the potential to enter the microfinance market, CGAP analyzed a short list of 30 institutions with promising microfinance operations. In FY 2005, we completed this research (published in CGAP Focus Note 28, Commercial Banks and Microfinance: Evolving Models of Success) and identified six discrete approaches banks use to enter the microfinance market.
  • Building on its work as part of the Middle East microfinance initiative CGAP partnered with Cairo-Amman Bank to help boost its microfinance services, including in the West Bank and Gaza.
  • To date, CGAP has granted PPIC awards to 44 leading-edge microfinance organizations from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. The FY 2005 round of the PPIC was conducted in partnership with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and focused on organizations breaking new ground in financial services for rural clients.
  • CGAP significantly scaled up its savings initiative and expanded its work on money transfers. It also continued focusing on reducing transaction costs through the use of e-payment technologies, to ensure that delivery of ever smaller financial transactions can be made cost-effectively.
  • CGAP launched country-level savings assessments to provide donors, governments, international networks, and technical service providers with a systematic methodology for analyzing opportunities and constraints to savings mobilization at the country level.
  • CGAP worked with MFIs involved in domestic and intraregional money transfers—from Haiti to India to Mongolia—to document the opportunities and constraints of linking with formal money transfers systems. The findings, published in Occasional Paper No. 10, Crafting a Money Transfers Strategy: Guidance for Pro-Poor Financial Service Providers, call on microfinance providers to negotiate agreements carefully, phase in the commercial relationship, and avoid the pitfalls of inflexible and exclusive contracts.
  • CGAP conducted a global review of promising agricultural lending operations that culminated in seven case studies, which provide insight into good practice methodologies in Kyrgyzstan, Thailand, Mali, Peru, Mozambique, and Kenya. In FY 2005, these case studies formed part of the basis for CGAP Occasional Paper No.11, Managing Risks and Designing Products for Agricultural Microfinance: Features of an Emerging Model.
  • CGAP continued to provide policy inputs, contribute to workshops, and review drafts of microfinance legislation for a number of countries, including Madagascar and China. We also completed several country level policy diagnostics, including in Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, and Tunisia. CGAP also continued its longstanding collaboration with BCEAO, the West African Central Bank.
  • CGAP worked with experts from the World Bank to publish a Focus Note summarizing the implications of the international framework for antimoney laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) for financial service providers working with low income people.
  • Building on CGAP’s Donor Peer Reviews, the CLEAR process engages national governments, practitioners, and donors to examine aid effectiveness at the country level. Together with the European Union and the Group of African, Caribbean and Pacific states (ACP), CGAP launched the EU/ACP Microfinance Framework Program. CGAP also assisted in issuing an EU/ACP call for proposals to improve the capacity of microfinance actors in ACP countries.
  • The first thematic workshop on Social Performance was held in Paris to help define a common understanding and identify information needs of donors and practitioners.
  • CGAP managed the transition of leadership at the MIX and continued its active involvement and oversight of its operations.
  • In cooperation with the Poland-based Microfinance Centre (MFC), CGAP has launched a regional microfinance center for Eastern Europe and Central Asia based in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
  • To date, CGAP has developed seven “Skills for Microfinance Managers” courses on best practices in financial and operational management for MFIs.