Thursday, October 20 2005 19:04 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: Two of the world's leading microfinance organisations Accion International and Unitus together are looking at providing microfinance services to 15 million of India's under-privileged within the next 10 years.

Announcing their strategic partnership seeking to create a large scale profitable microfinance industry in India, Elisabeth Rhyne, Senior Vice-President, International Operations, Accion, said the alliance will provide "permanent and sustainable apporach for continuous development of microfinance services throughout the country".

"Being world's second most populous country and with a significant section of population living on less than USD two per day, India stands uniquely poised to capitalise on inceased access to microfinance services", she told reporters.

The Centre here will have a 12-15 member Indian team, Geof Davis, CEO and President Unitus said.

Accion will assist commercial entities such as banks and finance companies in extending microfinance products and services providing technical assistance and training.

Unitus, microfinance accelerator acting as a social venture capitalist, will identify high potential NGO microfinance institutions and speed their growth through grants, capacity-building, consulting and capital investments, Davis said.

Unitus is currently working with five MFI (Microfinance Institutions) partners in India namely SKS, BSS, ASA-GV, Bandhan and Grameen Koota.

As of August 2005, Unitus has seven partners worldwide while Accion has 26 partners in 20 countries with a USD 1.1 billion-loan portfolio.