FIFTEEN microfinance institutions in the Caribbean will participate in and benefit from a Capacity Building Programme (Carib – Cap II) which aims to help the English–speaking Caribbean develop its microfinance industry. This is according to a release from the Inter American Development Bank (IDB).

Beneficiaries include microfinance institutions from The Bahamas, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Carib-Cap II is set to launch at month end during the Caribbean Microfinance Forum IV being held in Barbados.
The Caribbean Microfinance Forum IV is an annual gathering of microfinance institutions that begun under the auspices of the Carib-Cap project.
The theme of this year’s meeting is “Building High Performance MFIs – Increasing Financial Access for the Poor”.
The release said that the US$2.7M technical programme is a joint effort by the Multilateral Investment Fund, member of the IDB Group, the Caribbean Development Bank, the European Commission and Citi Foundation. And it will examine the unique growth challenges faced by microfinance institutions in the English-speaking Caribbean, by providing training in management, marketing, product design and financial tools among other areas.
A highlight of this year’s meeting is a training programme on the “SMART campaign”, an international effort spearheaded by the Center for Financial Inclusion (Accion) in Washington D.C. focusing on client protection.
This training for the Caribbean is part of a larger collaboration between the MIF and the Center, and the goal is to assess and eventually certify microfinance institutions in responsible financial practices.
The first Citi Micro-entrepreneurship Awards for the Caribbean will also be presented by Citi Foundation at this event. The Institute for Private Enterprise (IPED), a leading microfinance institution here in Guyana is one of the finalists for the Excellence in Microfinance for the Caribbean Award. And one of IPED’s micro entrepreneurs Beverley Paton is also a finalist for the Excellence in Microentrepreneurship for the Caribbean Award.
Both awards are sponsored by Citi Foundation and the winners will be announced on September 30 in Barbados.
Carib-Cap II will better enable the Caribbean Microfinance Alliance (CMFA) a network of microfinance institutions established to develop a business ecosystem that expands lending to low-income enterprises to increase its capacity to serve as a focal point for networking, knowledge-sharing and capacity-building for microfinance institutions in the Caribbean.