Global microscope on the microfinance business environment 2012

15
licensing deposit-taking MFIs. Meanwhile,
Madagascar’s category score worsened, primarily
owing to the requirement that all microcredit
organisations be licensed by the supervisory
Commission de Supervision Bancaire et Financière
(CSBF), which in effect barred all unregulated
microfi nance institutions from offering microloans.
Senegal’s score also dropped to zero owing to more
stringent implementation of regulations, which
inhibit and increasingly prohibit unregulated
microfi nance.
Deposit-taking frameworks improved in Kenya
and Senegal, both increasing their scores to 3 out
of 4, with accessible and well-balanced regulatory
requirements for different levels of institution in
each country. The bulk of the criteria under
Supporting Institutional Framework show moderate
increases. Most notably, Kenya is now the fi rst, and
only country to have achieved a score of 4 out of 4
© The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2012
<strong>Global</strong> <strong>microscope</strong> on the microfi nance business environment 2012
for fi nancial transactions through agents. With
over one-third of the population using M-Pesa, it
now has one of highest rates of access to fi nancial
services of any developing country in the world.
The one area showing limited improvement in the
region is the development of credit bureaus:
Rwanda, the highest-scoring country in the region,
has a score of 2, which acknowledges that a credit
bureau exists in the country, but it has several
structural and operational weaknesses.
Four of the 11 Sub-Saharan African countries,
including Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of
Congo, Senegal, and Tanzania effectively have no
credit bureau for microfi nance. Only seven other
countries in the study (including Bangladesh,
Haiti, Lebanon, and Tajikistan) also reported
having no existing credit bureau. This, however,
should improve in future years with several projects
under way.