Measuring technical efficiency of microfinance institutions in India

Abstract

The last three decades have witnessed an expansion in the domain and scope of microfinance activities shaping policy discussions as well as systems within and across many national contexts. The modern microfinance movements dates back to the 1970s when the experimental programmers in India, Bangladesh, Brazil, and a few other countries began to extend tiny loans to groups of poor women to invest in microenterprises. It has been argued for long that commercial banks have not met the credit needs of financially challenged people who are not able to offer collaterals but who have feasible and promising investment ideas that can turn into profitable initiatives (Hollis and Sweetman, 1998).