Poverty Alleviation in Bangladesh through Microfinance: An Analytical View from the Perspective of its Problems and Prospect

Having a good financial support is considered as the greatest strength almost in every affair of today's materialistic world. In other words, finance is the most valuable resource for the smooth living standard of an individual and development of a country as a whole. Micro-finance is such an innovative financial weapon that incorporates both credit and savings in the same package in order to improve the well being of poor people in developing countries. This is such an important tool of the modern societal development programme that assists in alleviating poverty through the creation of income and jobs for the poor people, which automatically accelerates the speed of the wheels of economic development and promotes overall development of a nation by integrating the poor into the economic circuit. In Bangladesh, many Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) in particular Grameen Bank, BRAC, etc., have been implementing the micro-finance programme towards poverty alleviation successfully from the last couple of years. The direct impact of their significant performance is found in the growing levels of health care, nutrition and education expenditures, better income and above all true empowerment of poor people by increasing their confidence, independence and willingness capability to take decisions. The main objective of this study is to explore how micro-finance is used in poverty alleviation of Bangladesh. The detailed objectives of the study are to assess the role of micro-finance in poverty alleviation, highlight and evaluate the contributions of NGOs in implementing the micro-finance programme towards poverty alleviation, identify the problems in implementing the micro-finance programme towards poverty alleviation and explore the prospect of the programme towards poverty alleviation in the form of findings and recommendations.