Topic: Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on microfinance in two countries.

Task Details: Against the backdrop of the purpose of microfinance, which is to finance the livelihood, health care, education, housing improvements, small business creation, selected micro-entrepreneurial aspirations and other needs of populations living in poverty or near-poverty levels, and who are not served by the traditional financial institutions, you are required to undertake the following.Students are required to research the operation of microfinance in two significant countries (selected from different continents) in recent years and produce a report which:

a. Describes the structure and operation of microfinance and MFIs in the two selected countries;

b. Outlines the impacts of COVID-19 on each of the two selected countries as a whole, considering numbers of coronavirus cases, deaths and recoveries in the population, changes in real GDP, employment, inflation, interest rates and government and health care responses;

c. Examines the impacts of COVID-19 on the various members of the microfinance community in each selected country. Without limiting the scope of your investigation, and recognising the limited availability of data, you should consider the impacts (where possible) on stakeholders such as:

o borrowers and their ability to repay loans, their defaults and likely defaults, over-indebtedness, business failures, suicides and other outcomes;

o MFIs and their operations, including loss of profits, defaults, repayment and other concessions offered to clients, availability of finance from investors (or calls for withdrawals of equity and loan capital);

o consumers and other users of borrowers' outputo the regulators and any assistance offered to MFIs and their clients;

o any global assistance from the United Nations, other countries, charities or other helpers; and

o other issues you consider relevant; and

d. Given your insights from a - c, recommends to the two selected countries' governments and other authorities strategies for dealing with any future pandemic and, in particular, how participants in the microfinance sector may be protected from - or be assisted to manage - the impacts.