Communications Development Incorporated announces publication of The Microfinance Revolution: Lessons from Indonesia

Summer 2002
Communications Development announces publication of The Microfinance Revolution: Lessons from Indonesia, the second in a three-volume anthology analyzing microfinance around the world. The volume, by Marguerite S. Robinson—a social anthropologist and internationally recognized expert on microfinance—was edited and produced by Communications Development.

The revolution occurring in finance for low-income people refers to commercial microfinance—the delivery of financial services to the economically active poor on a large scale through competing, financially self-sufficient institutions. The Microfinance Revolution: Lessons from Indonesia examines in the Indonesian context the principles and practices of commercial microfinance that were explored and analyzed in volume 1 (also edited and produced by Communications Development). The first country to develop profitable microfinance on a large scale, Indonesia is home to the world's oldest and largest commercial microfinance institutions.

The book examines many financial institutions, with a special emphasis on Bank Rakyat Indonesia's microbanking system, which in the mid-1980s was transformed from a failed, subsidized credit program to a nationwide commercial financial institution that profitably provides microfinance services—savings and credit—to more than 20 million people. Commercial microbanking remained stable and profitable in Indonesia even as the country's financial system collapsed during the recent crisis. This volume shows why, and offers crucial lessons for developing countries everywhere.