While the country keeps worrying about the banking sector in India, the micro-finance industry and its perils, pitfalls or achievements tend to be brushed under the carpet.

But if we take into account the delivery that the industry is executing, it is doing a ginormous service in the country’s fight against poverty. While in the general framework of things, people are busy taking stock of nuts and bolts of every sector’s performance in the economy, the achievements of this particular segment hardly finds any reference.

At the cost of repetition, let us revisit the reason this segment was given a special mandate. MFIs received their legal sanction for creating entrepreneurial capacities among the masses. The goal was to create sustainable economic dynamics to break the vicious circle of poverty and create the virtuous cycle of increasing prosperity.

But enterprise requires capital and knowledge of deployment of funds. For that there was a need to create access to finance for the people who found even daily survival a struggle. Not only that, there was also the need to create a system that would impart the knowledge to deploy the capital for productive use by the masses. In short, this was the idea of financial inclusion.

To create this space MFIs were created as the instrument of delivery. The entire structure was properly formalised around only at the end of 2011. Since then the MFIs have been making steady inroads into the mandated space.

It has just been a little over seven years now. And despite there being less than stellar performance from the other financial industry sector, MFIs have returned a growth rate of 21.9 per cent in total number of accounts in FY2019 with the number being 9.33 crore. The lead was of course taken by the NBFC-MFIs. They accounted for a gross loan outstanding of Rs 68,868 crore which is 36.8 per cent of the total micro-credit universe. There has been more. The aggregated GLP of the NBFC-MFIs stood at Rs 68,207 crore, a 47 per cent Y-O-Y growth.

This spread also raised the requirement of staff and gave a boost to employment in the sector. And there has been a total growth of 34 per cent at 1,04,973 people.

Loan disbursement also grew by 28 per cent and 44 per cent in loan amount disbursed. The NBFC-MFIs to sustain this growth also needed capital infusion to keep up with the growth in the volume of business. The equity infusion in this segment got a boost of 42 per cent at Rs 14,206 crore. The figures stand testimony to the dedication and faithful execution of the mandate that the sector is delivering. But there are yet miles to go before the industry can rest on its laurels.