اشكالية الموازنة بين الاداءين المالي والاجتماعي في موسسات التمويل الاصغر العربية

The Problem of Balancing the Financial and Social Performance in Arab Microfinance Institutions

Microfinance is means to fight against poverty in developing countries, through the financing of income-generating activities for poor households. However, the best way to help the poor gain access to financial services welfarists opposes the approach to that of institutionalists While the welfarists, anxious to serve the poorest people focus on the depth outreach, the institutionalists, seeking for financial sustainability, will prefer instead the breath of outreach. However, these two approaches are the two ends of a spectrum within which this study aims to analyze the ability of microfinance institutions (MFIs) to show good financial performance and have a high depth of outreach. By applying both Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on a sample of 20 MFIs from 7 Arab countries, the results show that all MFIs of Egypt are both financially and socially successful, whereas that of Tunisia is socially successful and those of Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon are financially successful. The determinants of financial performance and social performance vary according to the MFI’s country, its institutional development and the loan size.