Microfinance Africa recently published a blog post on The Need for Financial Literacy in Microfinance and its Impact. This post outlines five different arguments for the importance of financial literacy campaigns. Among these, MFTransparency is highlighted for the case we have made for the importance of pricing transparency.

Microfinance Focus: MFTransparency and The Africa Microfinance Network (AFMIN) have announced their partnership to promote pricing transparency in microfinance throughout Africa.

MFTransparency and The Africa Microfinance Network (AFMIN) today officially announced their partnership to promote pricing transparency in microfinance throughout Africa. AFMIN will support MFTransparency by encouraging its members to participate in the Transparent Pricing Initiative and MFTransparency will provide training on interest rate calculations and pricing transparency to AFMIN members.

Recently David Roodman posted an interesting discussion on his blog. You can read what he wrote here: “Quick: What’s the Grameen Bank’s Interest Rate?” There are some very interesting points in his posting, to which I wrote the following reply. You’ll find it best to read his posting first, but even without that context, the following points are relevant.

Gender Links: Although microfinance has done a lot to help women in Africa, Vice President of MicroFinance Transparency, Alexandra Fiorillo, outlines certain concerns over lending.

El próximo 2 de diciembre se celebrará en el Radisson Plaza Hotel la Jornada Iniciativa de Transparencia de Precios en Bolivia organizada por MFTransparency, una iniciativa a escala mundial a favor de la asignación de precios transparentes y responsables en la industria de las microfinanzas.

MFTransparency, a global initiative working to bring pricing transparency to the microfinance industry, will host a conference marking the data launch of the Transparent Pricing Initiative in Bolivia on December 2, 2010 at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in La Paz, Bolivia.

En una de mis anteriores entradas al blog, compartí con ustedes nuestros planes de organizar una conferencia con el objetivo de presentar los resultados de nuestra Iniciativa de Transparencia de Precios en Bolivia a principios de septiembre.

Antes de MFTransparency organizar el lanzamiento de sus Iniciativas en cualquier país, se llevan a cabo una serie de investigaciones que nos permitan entender mejor el sector y mercado microfinanciero y así poder adaptar el lanzamiento y el proyecto a las necesidades de cada nación. Así fue el caso con Colombia.

Over the past 3 months, our team has been working with over 25 Bolivian institutions on data collection and to date, 17 MFIs have submitted complete data, while 9 additional institutions are still in the process of completing their submissions. Last week I met personally with ANED, Banco de Crédito (BCP), Banco Unión, IDEPRO, Fortaleza and Ecofuturo to assist them in this process.