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The Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (MABS) program is an initiative designed to accelerate national economic transformation by encouraging the Philippine rural banking industry to significantly expand the microenterprise access to microfinance services. To do so, the MABS Program assists client rural banks in the Philippines to increase the financial services they provide to the microenterprise sector by providing microfinance technical assistance and training to rural banks. Trained banks in turn offer microfinance loan and deposit services specially tailored to microenterprise clients.
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Since its inception in 1998, the MABS Program has helped 337 rural banks branches in the Philippines. While the MABS Program operates throughout the Philippines, most MABS activities are focused on Mindanao.
Significantly, there are over 780 rural and cooperative rural banks covering over 85% of the municipalities and cities of the Philippines. These banks are culturally and geographically close to the potential clients that comprise the microenterprise sector. It has been shown that limited access to financial services constrains economic growth in the Philippines. This is especially true for lower socio-economic groups, including microenterprises, which must turn to moneylenders, pawnshops or lending investors for credit instead of formal institutions for credit. The MABS Program targets these lower socio-economic groups and microentrepreneurs by working with rural banks to reach such groups in a profitable, but equitable, manner.
The Program is funded by the , and is being implemented in partnership with the . Philippine Government oversight of the Program is provided by the Mindanao Economic Development Council (MEDCo).
The MABS Program has become a successful model for increasing microenterprises' access to financial services and servicing poor clients in rural areas of the Philippines. MABS Service Providers (MSPs), private consulting firms that have been trained by the Program and accredited by RBAP, are presently providing MABS technical services and training to rural banks on a fee basis.
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