We do not currently have adequate tools to determine whether we are indeed living up to our commitments to reach the poor with a range of financial services, including credit, savings, insurance and others. Nor do we in the microenterprise field have a detailed enough understanding of the great diversity of poor entrepreneurs to be able to tailor new products and services to meet their specific needs and opportunities. We are grappling with these issues at the present time. We must be careful that in our efforts to target the very poor, we do not define poverty-lending so narrowly as to stifle innovation in products and services and arbitrarily limit economic growth for the very poor we seek to serve. Thus, finding appropriate measuring tools and refining their use is a major challenge as we seek to make sure we are delivering services to the very poor.
Sustainability is another challenge.
We realize that many question whether it is possible to reach the poorest of entrepreneurs and still be sustainable. We ask the microfinance institutions we support to chart a realistic path toward operational self-sufficiency and then full sustainability within seven years. We monitor progress closely and offer assistance when problems arise. Our Agency is convinced that it is possible for microfinance to be sustainable. We have been leaders in pushing sustainability, because we want to see microfinance outlive donor funding and become a permanent, large-scale resource for the poor.