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Women and urban credit in Sri Lanka
01.03.1992
Credit is increasingly a key element in development strategies. For urban women it can have the dual effect of helping businesses to grow and stabilizing 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. -
Business regulation and poor entrepreneurs in urban India
01.03.1993
Microentrepreneurs are most familiar with government policy in the form of regulations such as municipal licences, sales tax, planning permissions and so on. What microentrepreneurs are subject to according to the statute book and what they are obliged to pay in practice are, however, often very different things. This article describes the results of a survey in a city in India looking into how slum-dwelling microentrepreneurs were affected by various pieces of government regulation. The article also asks to what extent taxes, fines and the confiscation of goods may be hindering the expansion of small business.