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Keeping its eyes on the ball: microfinance tackles issues rising from its success
Luxembourg has established its voice in the microfinance industry: in the words of Tom Seale, Vice-Chairman of ALFI, the Grand Duchy helps to “put the finance into microfinance”. This puts Luxembourg in the front line of accusations that the microfinance industry has been a victim of its own success. The focus of a recent one-day conference was on two questions: is commercial pressure creating mission drift? And, how do you measure social performance of microfinance investment funds? The delegates gathered in Luxembourg shared two fundamental attitudes: belief in microfinance as a tool to alleviate poverty and in the fact that it cannot achieve scale and financial sustainability without...
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