Yes, absolutely. I appreciate your clarification.
The microfinance movement worldwide definitely is creating a more structured and dependable market for financial services for the poor, giving them access to services they didn't have before. Microfinance institutions are superior to money lenders and friends and relatives as sources of capital primarily because they have many features of the banks, although the banks might find it uneconomic to reach such people. They have many features of the banks. They're rule bound, they're reliable, and they're fairly impersonal, so that people can do business with them without having to share their family secrets with the rest of the community, as is often the case with friends and relatives, certainly, and even money lenders.
It's really creating a more formal market for financial services in communities that have not had such a formal market before. That is a huge improvement in itself. There's no question that microfinance has achieved that. Whether it has achieved true economic development in the sense of moving the poor into the marketplace in a substantial way with true businesses, that's still debatable.