MFIs received Rs 998 crore funding in Q1

MFIN report stated that the gross loan portfolio had grown by 17% in the quarter under consideration over the same period last year

Micro finance institutions (MFIs) in the country have received Rs 998 crore debt funding during the first quarter of the current financial year. While 79 per cent of this amount was funded by banks, the balance amount was received from other financial institutions, according to the sixth issue of MicroMeter released by Microfinance Institutions Network (MFIN).

The MFIN report stated that the funding reflected the growing confidence of investors in the industry whose aggregate gross loan portfolio of (GLP) had grown by 17 per cent to Rs 21,332 crore in the quarter under consideration over the same period last year.

“As institutions that primarily provide micro credit to low income households, it is heartening to see that the GLP growth has been fairly broad based with 70 per cent of the MFIs showing an increase in GLP over Q1 of FY 12-13. Significant increase in lending has been approved in states such as West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bihar, Assam and Uttar Pradesh,” MFIN chief executive officer, Alok Prasad, said.

The report, however, said that the overall branch network and staff strength of MFIs continued to drop. This decline was stated have been directly contributed by MFIs that underwent corporate debt restructuring (CDR) and a few smaller MFIs.

Nevertheless, loan disbursals during quarter increased by 56 per cent. The average loan amount disbursed remained below Rs 15,000.