Microfinance Focus, December 20, 2011: National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has been partnering with Germany’s Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) for the last twenty years to address sustainable and inclusive growth in India.

A highlight of this collaboration has been the successful SHG (Self-Help Group) – Bank Linkage Programme which has become the world’s largest microfinance programme and currently reaches up to 100 million members.

During the last five years, NABARD and GIZ have expanded their collaboration into other rural and microfinance related areas. A Reform and Revival package for the Short-Term Cooperative Credit Structure (STCCS), which has been implemented by NABARD, was introduced.

Their Rural Financial Institutions Programme (RFIP) is currently working on a post-revival package. It is identifying capacity development need of the STCCS, redesigning its support measure for the microfinance sector improving access to insurance services and integrating its domestic remittance component into a broader financial inclusion perspective.

RFIP recently organized two workshops for the microinsurance sector. The workshop brought together diverse groups of microinsurance providers to define key issues of corporation centred on capacity development and innovation.

NABARD and GIZ conducted a technical study on Remittance in India which confirmed the need of developing the payments infrastructure including last mile delivery of financial services. RFIP aims to contribute to the development of the rural infrastructure to enable access to financial services.

Further, RFIP is working on the reforms and revival of the Cooperative Credit System and intends to promote Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) as demand oriented full financial service providers.