Yes, I would agree that certainly microfinancing needs to be seen as one tool in a multi-tool tool kit for economic development in general, and in particular in relation to helping the very poor. It's just one tool. However, there is one argument, which I think is a pretty strong one, that I've alluded to for putting microfinance at the head of the queue. It has the potential—and in some cases has clearly done so—to create a delivery infrastructure, a social service delivery infrastructure, that is self-sustaining and that the poor themselves are willing to pay for that infrastructure.
This is done to the extent that that infrastructure can be used to deliver other services, either by the microfinance institution itself or by other institutions that are using that same infrastructure—and when I refer to infrastructure, I am referring to the softer human infrastructure. Just imagine. You have in the developing world every day these groups of women, mixed groups of men and women, and more individual contacts between men and women and microfinance institutions. There's this interaction occurring between an outside agency and people living in very low-income communities, and it's creating a social intermediation in which trust is built between outsiders and insiders in these communities.
That's an infrastructure, if you will, that enables the delivery of services, initially microfinance services because that's immediately in demand. But when you offer other services alongside the microfinance services, or encouragement to use other services at these microfinance meetings, whether they be one on one or in groups, they in fact are creating a social infrastructure for service delivery. In that sense, it might be worth giving prior consideration, in terms of what comes first, to get the microfinance institution in there first, and then take advantage of that infrastructure, if in fact it's creating true social intermediation.