M2 The problems of credit for the poor

• Obtaining a loan from a bank is very difficult if you are poor. Officials will need evidence of your skills in reading, writing and managing money. They will also need evidence of how much property you have in case you cannot pay back a loan. Often women cannot obtain bank loans unless in their husband’s name.
• What experiences have you had in dealing with banks?

Discussion 

• Encourage participants to share their own experiences. Have some people met with problems in trying to obtain a loan? What kind of problems were these?
• Have they been able to overcome them? Have some people been successful in either opening bank accounts or obtaining credit? If so, why? What different kind of bank accounts have they used or found out about – for example, savings accounts, loans accounts, credit accounts.

Go to M3

This page was last updated on 04 August 2005