Transparency for microcredit lending organizations

Tamara Schweitzer who runs a great blog on Inc.com all about Kiva, posted about a fascinating new initiative. A few days ago, at the MicroCredit Summit in Bali , organizaers announced the launch of Microfinance Transparency, "a non-governmental organization designed to publicly report the interest rates of lending institutions worldwide. The US-based initiative is headed by industry expert Chuck Waterfield, and is backed by Muhammad Yunus, founder of Bangladesh-based lending institution Grameen Bank, and by Summit Campaign director, Sam Daley-Harris. The organization already has a substantial list of endorsers, including co-founder and executive director of Kiva, Matt Flannery."

This initiative is extremely important as more and more organizations get involved in microcredit...although microcredit needs to operate in a fair market, there will be unscrupulous organizations that try to take advantage of the poor. This is a great step towards keeping all actors accountable.