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Oxfam micro-loans
Jan. 20th, 2006 11:44 amFrom some junk mail they've just sent me, it appears that Oxfam are going into the micro-credit business; they want me to help capitalise them so that they can make £25 loans to create small businesses in (initially) Sudan and the tsunami-struck bits of Sri Lanka.
I recall![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rezendi's fulminations about the aid industry in general; the bits of the third world I've been to are clearly not in as much a mess as Sudan or Sri Lanka, but the impression I had is that what they lacked was in fact capital, and this seems to me a reasonably sensible way to provide it.
But there are those reading who know more about aid than I; is there some nasty catch here? Less-than-entirely-ethical investments (Russian oil in particular) have been remarkably good to me over the last year, and to have Lukoil, Rio Tinto Limited, PetroChinaCo and Walmart-de-Mexico pay to capitalise roti-makers in Batticaloa Province seems somehow appropriate.
I recall
rezendi's fulminations about the aid industry in general; the bits of the third world I've been to are clearly not in as much a mess as Sudan or Sri Lanka, but the impression I had is that what they lacked was in fact capital, and this seems to me a reasonably sensible way to provide it.But there are those reading who know more about aid than I; is there some nasty catch here? Less-than-entirely-ethical investments (Russian oil in particular) have been remarkably good to me over the last year, and to have Lukoil, Rio Tinto Limited, PetroChinaCo and Walmart-de-Mexico pay to capitalise roti-makers in Batticaloa Province seems somehow appropriate.
