American General Financial Services

2.0 CONCERNS on poverty

As we were ready to finish the first half of the decade of the 1990s, growing concerns about poverty stands in the political agendas around the world and the developing world, including Zambia.

The stubbornness of poverty, even in the richest nations, is reached with increasing impatience, and the governments of various ideological tendencies are trying to do something, while donors and other international agencies have been dispatched to provide support these efforts. It has even been precipitated by the worsening financial crisis and global economic sweeping the entire planet.

But, from good intentions remedies with success there is a long way. Thus, both conceptualizers and practitioners are again looking for operational approaches to address poverty. And yes, the old question of the extension of credit re-appears, based on financial inclusion. Financial inclusion plays a key role in reducing poverty. But with the financial crisis blowing across the globe is financial inclusion possible?

cross-sectional data have shown that people with access to credit have lower incidence of poverty. As we know, the extent to which poverty reduction and / or mitigation of its consequences has been a matter of public policy has varied considerably across countries and over time. In Zambia, for example, poverty has been at the forefront of concerns of the nation during the preparation of the Strategic Document for Poverty Reduction, which has seen the country qualify for the Heavily Indebted Countries Initiative Poor program led by the IMF International. One of the main issues discussed in this document has been access to credit.

In addition, in the early 1980s, not only poverty that one of several policy issues explicitly, but many have chosen instead to emphasize the cons-productive and budgetary costs of some of the programs against the poverty had been adopted earlier.

More recently, as we enter the 1990s, public attention has again focused on the potential role of government and nongovernmental organizations publicly supported organizations (NGOs) directly alleviate the distress of the poor continues.

Three decades ago, as new programs were introduced and old programs were

extended an optimistic view prevailed. The belief was that if a stable economic growth could be maintained, the government's actions could effectively solve the problem of poverty only if sufficient resources are allocated to this task (Danziger and Weinberg).

It is in this context that some countries have developed a vision of proactive promotion of sustainable financial services providers to unbanked citizens focusing on the provision of low interest rates.

3.0 INCLUSION financial and poverty

In the letter transmitting the Economic Report of the President 1964, President Johnson said: "We know what to do and this nation of abundance can certainly do it" (Johnson). optimism was soon followed, however, decreases by a faith in the government's ability to solve any problem (Aaron) and by sound arguments that social problems can be solved by "throwing money at them." This is one of perceptions that have led to the promotion of the private sector, but with the recent economic crisis, we saw the U.S. government's growing role that was denied to the private sector.

Despite this skepticism, in the 1990s, the pendulum of public opinion has the wind

back and new initiat.