LAHORE: The gross loan portfolio (GLP) of the microfinance industry has increased by Rs7 billion to reach Rs73 billion, while the number of active borrowers of microfinance has increased from 3.1 million in 2014 to 3.3 million in the first quarter of 2015.
According to Pakistan Microfinance Network’s (PMN) quarterly outreach bulletin – Micro Watch, the number of savers has seen substantial growth of 20% reaching a historical high of 10 million savers by the end of Quarter 1 of 2015.
This significant growth was primarily driven by the microfinance banks whose number of active clients increased by 8.8% and GLP by 12.7%. The Microfinance banks continue to witness unprecedented uptake in new borrowers and amount of loan disbursed. NRSP Microfinance Bank became the largest contributor in the first quarter of 2015 and added 42,176 new clients to its portfolio with loans work PKR 1.6 billion.
With this addition it is now on the fourth largest provider of micro-credit in the industry. Akhuwat as a microfinance institution proved to be the largest contributor to the sector by adding 39,000 new clients and a loan portfolio of PKR 627 million.
