Impactos sociais das microfinanceiras na cidade de Fortaleza

Abstract

Microfinances are a relatively new tool of the financial system. Developed with the intention of diminushing social inequality and extreme poverty during the 20th century by professor and researcher, Muhammad Yunus, whom received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, there is little known about the real impact of this pratice on poverty and on the social development of the communities receiving microfinance programs. The presente work has as objective, to demonstrate, if existent, the tools used to measure the social impacts of the microfinance institutions in the poor communities in the city of Fortaleza, and to discourse about such impacts. Since thereare no studies looking to analyze the social impacts of the microfinances in a specific region, it became necessary to research about it so such information can be find. In the study, the caracterization of social impact is given by data such as family income, the economic development of the effected region by the microfinance institution, the scholarity index, the rise of consumption goods and the decrease of the poverty gap of the benefited people, before and after the loans. The analysis was made based on secundar research and field research with interviews to the employees of the study objects; CredAmigo and Banco Paju. The results found showed the difficulty of microfinance institutions in Fortaleza to measure and calculate the size of the impact on their practices in the helped regions. The social impacts could not be measured precisely because of the lack of proper tools to do so. However, the impacts in the family income of the clients of both projects showed improvement.