Abstract

Microfinance is no panacea for the alleviation of poverty in the world. The environment influences its development. Legal frameworks, monitors and supervisors, its institutions and last but not least its customers with all their commitment play a major role for the success. Due to informational asymmetries, traditional financial markets are limited or fail to include poor households. Microfinance is able to overcome these imperfections and was developed especially for poor people suffering from financial exclusion and often dependent on informal sources such as exploitative moneylenders. The different benefits, characteristics and products of microfinance will be highlighted hereafter. First a general country profile will be given with the most important economic features such as the development of GDP, economic structure, inflation and unemployment rates. The latter raises concerns, especially among young academics

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