PLACEMENT AND OUTREACH OF GROUP-BASED CREDIT ORGANIZATIONS: THE CASES OF ASA, BRAC, AND PROSHIKA IN BANGLADESH
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Bangladesh has witnessed major strides in providing financial services to the rural
poor. These services are provided largely through innovative group-based credit
programs of several nongovernmental organizations. The implicit but widespread
assumption has been that they are indeed placed in special poverty-stricken areas. Is this
assumption valid? If not, what factors actually affect programs' placement across
communities? This paper uses an unique thana-level data set to analyze the placement of
three group-based credit programs in Bangladesh. Analysis of branch placement indicates
that, unlike commercial banks, nongovernmental institutions do respond to general
conditions of poverty. However, it appears that NGO services are located more in poor
pockets of relatively well-developed areas than in remoter, less-developed regions. Client
density of the established branches, however, did not exhibit such a feature and actually
tended to be better in less advantageous locations.