There have been some concerns in the recent past expressed in the media about high-interest rates, coercive recovery processes, and multiple lending practices by some microfinance institutions. In order to study these and other related issues and implications for its policies and given the useful role played by the microfinance institutions in providing access to financial services to the poor and excluded, the Reserve Bank of India set up a Sub-Committee of the Central Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank to study the issues and concerns in this sector, including ways and means of making interest rates charged by them reasonable.
Shri Y H Malegam, a senior member on the Central Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank of India will chair the Sub-Committee. Other members of the Sub-Committee include Smt. Shashi Rajagopalan, Shri U R Rao, Shri Kumar Mangalam Birla, and Dr. K C Chakrabarty, Deputy Governor. Shri V K Sharma, Executive Director, Reserve Bank of India will be the Member Secretary to the Sub-Committee. The Sub-Committee will submit its report in three months. The Reserve Bank of India regulates only those microfinance institutions which are registered with it as non-banking finance companies. Although the registered companies cover over 80 percent of the microfinance business, in terms of the number of companies they constitute a small percentage of the total number of MFIs in the country. The Reserve Bank, however, does not prescribe lending rates for these institutions.
