Haiti - Economy : Insurance for micro-entrepreneurs
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) will officially announce Tuesday, January 29, a project amounting 1.96 million U.S. dollars to help thousands of low-income micro-entrepreneurs to protect their livelihoods against major natural events.
Recall that in Haiti, only 0.3% of the population [one of the lowest rates in the world] has insurance, in one form or another. Micro entrepreneurs are particularly vulnerable to uninsured losses, because teh latter can force them o declare themselves insolvent and prevent them from seeking new loans at the same time they need to recover capital.
The partnership between IFC and the company "Microinsurance Catastrophe Risk Organisation" (MiCRO) will allow micro-entrepreneurs Haitian to contract for the first time, to an affordable cost, an insurance based on a weather index.
Fonkoze, the leading Haitian organization of microfinance, will distribute over the next three years, this insurance, which should benefit nearly 70,000 clients, mostly women at the head of micro enterprises.
