Portal de Microfinanzas: MFTransparency ha lanzado su Iniciativa de Transparencia de Preciosen Bolivia con 2 seminarios en La Paz y Santa Cruz de la Sierra durante la primera semana de Mayo del presente.Socios estratégicos de MFTransparency en este esfuerzo son las dos redes microfinancieras locales ASOFIN y FINRURAL.

MFTransparency ha lanzado su Iniciativa de Transparencia de Precios en Bolivia con 2 seminarios en La Paz y Santa Cruz de la Sierra durante la primera semana de Mayo del presente.

Microfinance Insights: Following the dissemination of two pilot countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina and Cambodia – MFTransparancy announced the disclosure of the pricing data from Azerbaijan. The data presents a number of interesting trends in pricing practices, product types as well as differentiating factors that underlie the variations in pricing.

Microfinance Focus: MFTransparency, a global initiative for fair and transparent pricing in the microfinance industry is hosting a webinar on Tuesday, June 1, 2010 from 7:00 AM -8:30 AM EST, launching the true-cost microfinance pricing data from Azerbaijan. The discussion will interpret the data and its effect on market conditions as well as answer questions from a range of stakeholders and the public

Governance Now: Microfinance in India still has considerable geographical divide. The southern states have done well in terms of taking microfinance initiatives as well as in uptake. On the other hand, it’s still taking time for microfinance to pick up in northern states.

Last week, we officially launched our Transparent Pricing Initiative in Bolivia, sponsored by the Ford Foundation and MicroNed. This project launch in our third Latin American country has been a great success and we’re excited about the widespread support from the diverse Bolivian microfinance community!

MicroCapital: Ecuador’s central bank, Banco Central del Ecuador (BCE), recently further reduced the cap on annual interest rates to 30.5 percent from 33.9 percent for retail microlenders, and to 27.5 percent from 33.3 percent for all others lenders. Since 2007, when the national government enacted banking reforms allowing the central bank to set a maximum interest rate for all banking institutions, the cap for microlenders has been dropping.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I would like to share some insights on Ecuador’s regulatory framework for the microfinance sector and advances in the area of transparency.

If you have perused our data, you may have noticed the market average curve present on all our country graphs. This curve is so fundamental to MFTransparency that its characteristic downward slope is even represented in our logo. This is the curve relating interest rates to loan size, and it is extremely important in analyzing the price of microloan products.

I have just returned from a two-week trip to launch the Transparent Pricing Initiative in Ecuador and Bolivia. I am happy to report that the launch was successful in both countries.