Thank you very much.
I want to thank all of you for coming and making presentations. They were very informative. I always appreciate getting those perspectives.
I think a couple of you can have a go at my first question—Larry touched on it in his presentation—which is about some of the downsides of having microfinancing without the checks and balances.
Earlier this week we had Scotiabank here at the committee, and they made a presentation as well. They told us about the work they are doing around microfinance, just as you have. We agree today, as we did on that day, that microfinance can play a powerful role in elevating people out of poverty, especially for women. We've seen some evidence of that out there, albeit anecdotal evidence.
However, as you know, microfinance and microcredit have been the subjects of growing criticism. You touched on that again today.
In February the Winnipeg Free Press published a story, and perhaps it's the same one you were referring to. Here it just says “Indian state”; I'm not sure if it was Andhra Pradesh.
It says, “Indian state pushes microfinance prosecutions after revelations of lender links to suicides”. The government there blamed a spate of suicides on aggressive lending and collection tactics. If you were at a really deep level of poverty and then on top of that you got into some microfinance debt that you were struggling to pay back, you can imagine what kind of psychological pressure that could place on you.
You've touched on it, and I'd like you to expand on it a little bit more for me, but I want to give others the opportunity as well.
How would you respond to these criticisms? Do they have a sound basis? What can organizations like yours do to prevent predatory lending practices?
Sometimes I think we could almost ask the same question of our lending institutions here in the western world. This situation is not unique to the developing world, but what's unique in the developing world is that it's very fragile. Members of society become the targets and the victims.