Second Poverty Alleviation Microfinance Project (Microfinance II)

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The Second Poverty Alleviation Microfinance Project (Microfinance II) to Bangladesh aims to continue the International Development Association's (IDA's) support for poverty alleviation through microcredit. The Project has five main components. 1) The mainstream microfinance - rural microcredit component will continue to support horizontal and vertical expansion of rural microcredit, to respond to the unmet demand and the need for larger loans per borrower, respectively. 2) The urban microcredit component will support scaling-up of urban microcredit activities and will cover up to 270,000 urban borrowers. 3) The hard-core poor component will target program expansion, change the current microcredit delivery system, and diversify financial services. 4) The microenterprise lending component will help progressive or graduate microcredit borrowers or microentrepreneurs who have entrepreneurial talents to scale-up their activities. 5) The institutional development component will strengthen Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation's (PKSF) and small and medium-size partner organizations' (POs) capacity to increase outreach, broaden the range of financial services benefiting the poor and hard-core poor, and improve POs' creditworthiness and sustainability.