Women and Urban Credit in Sri Lanka

Alana Albee and K D Reid
Small Enterprise Development Journal, Volume 3, Number 1, March 1993

Printer friendly version - 63Kb doc

Credit is increasingly a key element in development strategies. For urban women it can have a dual effect of helping small businesses to grow and stabilising family incomes. In Sri Lanka, however, appropriate affordable credit is not always available to women. This is in spite of the fact that women are often the most reliable borrowers. This article outlines the most widespread Sri Lankan sources of credit and highlights the potential of informal credit in providing basic programming principles. These are illustrated here in the example of the Siddhartha Path Women's Mutual Help Group.