The Beauty of Microfinace

When people ask me about my experience in China, one impression stands out above all others: the enormous, largely untapped human capital possessed by the world's most populous nation. China's human resources are vast, but the country still lacks the soft infrastructure to allocate these resources efficiently to the cause of sustainable development. Nowhere is this gap more serve, or more evident, than in China's vast, impoverished countryside. Rural entrepreneurs fueled much of the growth of the 1980s, but in subsequent years educational, medical, and economic policies have made it increasingly difficult to access the vast, latent store of human capital among China's rural poor. I believe microfinance will be crucial to tapping this important resource, by giving the rural poor the freedom to improve their lives through creating businesses and, eventually, accessing educational, health, and other social services. The beauty of microfinance is that it invests in individuals- something China still does too little of, meaning a great store of human capital remains untapped.

By Scott Moore