EMN 2008-2009 Overview - Réseau Européen de la Microfinance

3.1 Country Base
Table 2 in the previous section shows the difference in the number of actors in each country.
The largest number of actors is found in Italy, which, as mentioned earlier, is made up of
a large number of small social microcredit initiatives and anti-usury associations. Bulgaria
and Hungary have the next highest number of institutions, in Bulgaria because the majority
of commercial banks have some form of microfinance initiative and in the case of Hungary
because of the existence of the multitude of savings cooperatives and Local Enterprise
Agencies (LEAs). The countries with the next highest number of institutions are Spain and
the United Kingdom. In Spain, all savings banks that had microfinance programs in the years
2008-2009 were contacted as well as the Social Microcredit Support Organisations (SMSOs)
that had a microcredit program that was financially independent from the savings banks.
Finally, in the UK, a large number of actors can be found due to the strong activity of public,
private and non-profit development finance agencies. In particular, Community Development
Financial Institutions play an important role in the UK microcredit sector and the majority of
microlending intuitions in the United Kingdom could be grouped into this category.
3.2 Scale
Sector Characteristics
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In 2009, the organisations surveyed 9 disbursed a total of 84,523 microloans worth 828
million euros. 138 of the 170 participating institutions gave information regarding the number
of loans and loan value for 2009 and 118 gave information for the same information for 2008.
In the Eastern countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and
Romania), the total number of loans disbursed was 18,293, for the equivalent of 307 million
euros, whereas in the Western countries (Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the
Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom), the total
number of loans disbursed came to 51,027, equivalent to 477 million euros. Eastern countries
represent 26% of total loans and 40% of total value, whereas Western countries represent 74%
of total loans and 60% of total value. This means that in the Eastern EU countries the average
loan value is higher than in Western EU countries 10 .
9 For these numbers, the data of Fundusz Micro have been included, although they did not responded to the survey, the public information
reported to the Mix Market was included.
10 For these numbers, the data of Fundusz Micro have not been included.
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