An Assessment of Poverty Outreach of Palli Daridro Bimochon Foundation (PDBF)

This report aims to assess the relative depth of poverty outreach of the Palli Daridro Bimochon Foundation (PDBF), an MFI based in Bangladesh. For this purpose, it utilizes the CGAP/IFPRI tool and examines its potential to integrate into regular programming activities.

This study addresses four issues:

• It presents the poverty profiles of PDBF members in relation to a representative sample of non-clients;
• It identifies the realtive depth of PDBF's poverty outreach;
• It explores the levels of well-being of PDBF clients and their respective areas relative to district-level and national poverty data;
• It provides some basic information on the overall microfinance market in PDBF's areas of operation under study.

The report reveals that:

• The poorer of the PDBF clients are somewhat better off than the poorer among the non-client group, while the better-off among the PDBF clients are poorer than the better-oo among the non-clients group;
• Though, PDBF may not be dealing with the poorest but in absolute terms it is dealing with very poor people;
• PDBF has a significantly higher percentage of households that satisfy its land-based criteria than the non-client group.

Finally, the paper recommends that:

• PDBF should explore ways to fine-tune the land-based indicator as a pro-poor screen.

The next step should be market studies that provide better understanding of the relationships between the livelihoods constraints and opportunities of the poor and financial services on offer so that products and services could be designed to better suit the clients.