Microcredit in the Caribbean: Experiences & Best Practices

Author
Lord, Karen
Date
May 2002
The central objectives of this study were to establish the main experiences of microfinance institutions (MFIs), and their clients, in the Caribbean islands of Barbados and Dominica. Implicit in these objectives was an attempt to identify what procedures were working and which were not in order to offer recommendations for the restructuring of the MFI sector in the Caribbean, and the creation of new, efficient MFIs. The MFIs included in the study were: Barbados Youth Business Trust (BYBT), a private sector initiative that provides loans to both start-up and existing businesses operated by youth; Pinelands Enterprise Facilitation Services (PEFS), a division of the Pinelands Creative Workshop (PCW), that operates as a provider of both finance and support services to microentrepreneurs; and The National Development Foundation of Dominica (NDFD), one of many National Development Foundations set up in the Caribbean in the 1980s with funding from USAID to provide credit and training to small entrepreneurs.