Microcredit Regulatory Authority

The Microcredit Regulatory Authority (MRA) has passed third year of its operation. According to the mandate specified in the Microcredit Regulatory Authority Act, 2006 the Authority is responsible for monitoring and  supervision of the microcredit operations of  NGOs  (NGO-MFIs). Requirement of license from the  Authority  is mandatory for  all  NGO-MFIs  in  Bangladesh to operate microfinance operation. In the first phase the Authority has invited applications for license from the Institutions those who had operations before the enactment of the Law, and thus received 4240 applications. Till 27 Octo-ber, 2009 MRA has issued licenses in favor of 453 institutions, and could not approve 1722 applica-tions; other applications are under a systematic review.

All licensed NGO-MFIs and applicants whose applications are under-process provide financial and other reports to the Authority in a prescribed format twice a year. This publication is based on the information provided by all  licensed NGO-MFIs for the  financial year ended 30 June, 2008. Timely collection of reliable information from all institutions still seems to be the main challenge for publishing this kind of reports in time. Cooperation from the sector is very important for this.  MRA continuously upgrades its publication on the basis of acquired knowledge, demand of the market and availability of technological support. This report has been arranged in a different manner from the previous reports. It contains a chapter of analytical information of top 20 NGO-MFIs as a test case in addition to general information of all  licensed NGO-MFIs. This was possible due  to  the newly established Database  in MRA. MRA plans to publish its future reports with detail analysis. It also plans to maintain a dynamic web content of this  information, which will provide up  to date  information of NGO-MFIs on a regular basis. 

We hope that this publication will be considered valuable to all related stakeholders and their valuable comments will provide MRA the future direction. We also expect that the sector will be ben-efited  by this  kind of  nationwide analysis of microfinance operations  in  Bangladesh.  I thank my colleagues in MRA who have put their all efforts to bring out this publication.