Assessing Study of the Effects of Microcredit in Tunisia

Transcription

British Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Sciences
December 2011, Vol. 3 (1)
108
Assessing Study of the Effects of Microcredit in Tunisia: Illustrated by Enda Action
Abdessatar Ati
Professor of economics, CBA, Jazan University
Hermassi Hela
Doctor in economics,Tunis University
Absract
This paper deals with ENDA approach which consists in awarding loans to populations living in some of the
poorest quarters of Tunisia. We raised questions regarding the effects microcredits have on the well-being
of their recipients. In order to evaluate these effects, an empirical study has been undertaken. The study
was facilitated by AIMS methodology and impact evaluations as well as the enquiry involving two of
ENDA’s clients groups and one reference group for comparison. Three hypotheses were tested: the impact
of microcredit on the standard of living of a given individual: its impact on its activities as well as the impact
on the community.
The practice of mutually supportive social economics is not new in Tunisia; it goes back to the colonial
period. Having first a charitable content, it gradually widened in the early 20th century to more structured
actions, set around a network of associations, cooperatives, foundations and insurance companies. The
increasing precariousness of certain social groups after the Tunisian economy was liberalised, particularly
strongly felt in the late 1980s, led to a revival of mutually supportive economics.
The reasons for this revival are the same as those which were at the origin of the development of social
economics throughout the world: the wage relation becoming increasingly separated from institutionalisation,
social deregulation, and their corollary, the weakening/exclusion of certain classes of society. And there was
a need to carry out protean actions to mitigate the undesirable social effects of globalisation.
These actions gave pride of place to active solidarity, i.e. supporting the poorest by giving them small loans
to fund small-scale income-generating activities in conformity with the microfinance principles. Many
institutions and associations were thus set up to develop and support such microfinance.
These institutions naturally differ. Some express a political determination, being used to replace and/or round
off the institutional by the mutually supportive; that was how the Tunisian Solidarity Bank was set up. Others
spring more from the associative, and we believe ENDA is the most developed and illustrative of the second
category, by reason of the extent of its actions and the effects it is believed will result.
This work deals with the last institution of social economics. Using the methodology of impact studies on
micro-business services (AIMS) the work assesses the implications of ENDA’s financial contribution in the
shape of microcredit. Such a project is treated in two phases. Firstly, we shall look at the process that led to
the emerging in Tunisia of the practice of granting microcredit as a basic element of social economics.
Secondly, we shall assess the action carried on by ENDA.
© 2011 British Journals ISSN 2048-125X
December, Vol. 3 (1)
109
Social economics, institutional finance and microcredit in Tunisia
Social economics have been introduced and developed in Tunisia since the colonial period by certain
associations, cooperatives, foundations and insurance companies. The true revival of mutually supportive
economics goes back to the 1990s as a reaction against the problems brought by liberalisation. Specific
programmes were implemented by the Tunisian state with a view to integrating vulnerable groups, reducing
poverty and, especially, fighting against social exclusion. In this article we shall basically deal with actions
which aimed at active solidarity, i.e. fighting against poverty and exclusion via the channel of funding the
creation of micro-enterprises, and not through charity. The issue therefore is to give an outline of the
Tunisian approach to microfinance.
I.
Microfinance and microcredit in Tunisia
Mutually supportive economics is often called the ‘third sector’. The name reflects the fact that it comes
under neither a public sector working to basically offer social care and serve the general interest, nor the
logic of a private sector driven by the sole desire to accumulate profit.
The elements that helped mutually supportive economics to appear in Tunisia go back to that historical
circumstance that was at the origin of the birth of the ‘third way’ in the world: The development over more
than one century, of cooperatives in various shapes and sizes in farming, and to a lesser degree, of
associations, foundations and insurance companies.
The farming cooperatives were organised on the principle of solidarity. They were more about mutual
generous support in the form of work done for and mutual help given to neighbours and/or family, according
to the various agricultural seasons, than financial help. But as we have already said, mutually supportive
economics remain a public issue in Tunisia; these cooperatives come under the attributions of certain
ministries and are exempted from company tax.
As for the associations, foundations and insurance companies, these worked, we believe, in passive rather
than in active mutually supportive social economics. Their actions, unlike what appeared in the Ouled
Abdallah 1 , operate more within a charitable, ‘do-good’ scheme than one of economic insertion. But apart
from their functions, aims, structures and organisation, the associations, cooperatives, foundations and
insurance companies very rarely acted via microfinance. They operated within exclusivist approaches in the
sense that they did not usually try to mix a social end and an economic objective.
The first true experience in the field is, we think, that of ENDA (Environment and Development in the Arab
World). This was set up as a NGO in Tunisia in 1990. The aim this element of ENDA Third World,
headquartered in Dakar, set itself is to offer people who are outside the banking system a variety of
instruments and means to help them fight against poverty and precariousness in a structural way, eliminating
the reasons for the lack of decent lives and for this poverty.
1
Ouled Abdallah, ‘Report on social economics in Tunisia’, in L’économie sociale au Maghreb, Agence Espagnole de la
Coopération Internationale, 2007.
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Achieving such an objective is seen as part of active solidarity; it involves giving microcredit to these people
to create micro-enterprises that bring in a sufficient, stable income. Such aims and instruments define the
three referents 2 of microcredit, i.e. proximity relation, target population and credit amount.
According to the Microcredit Summit, which believes that microcredit serves as a major factor of socioeconomic development, microcredit means any operation of granting loans of small sums of money over a
relatively short period of time to people with low incomes to fund productive activities that generate an
income that suffices to guarantee their and their family’s (vital) needs 3 . Appearing in Asia more than 25
years ago, microcredit is practiced in 140 countries and affected 54 million families around the world in late
2001 4 . It is a system of local, decentralised funding, designed to encourage development, the target
population being mainly poor (rural and urban) people and women.
The entrepreneurial, or active enterprising finance, aspect was adopted by other actors. Thus microcredit is
considered as loans of small sums of money to extremely poor people which must serve to buy production
tools or fund productive activities 5 .
The second active microfinance institution in Tunisia is the Tunisian Solidarity Bank (BTS), a bank set up
and built in 1997 to promote enterprising solidarity and thus enhance the microcredit arrangement for the
said people. As we underlined above, in this work we consider the ENDA experience because of its unique
pioneer significance; the BTS remains a bank in the service of the state, which uses it to promote active
solidarity.
Introducing ENDA action; how it has developed
Inter-Arab ENDA is an international non-profit-making NGO which is part of the ENDA Third World
network housed in Senegal. Founded in 1990, it was first active in the ecology and then extended its
activities in 1993 to encompass urban development. Only in 1995 did it include microcredit in its
programmes, to become the first institution in Tunisia to practice and adopt internationally defined and
recognised good conduct standards. To finance this microcredit activity, from 1995-2005 ENDA received
donations from the European Union, the Spanish Cooperation and to a lesser degree Tunisia. Only from 2003
on did ENDA achieve financial self-sufficiency, to become an autonomous financial institution.
ENDA became a pioneer institution both as regards the volume and structure of microcredit granted and as
regards the good handling of the conditions under which it was given; its action on behalf of the poor people
who were living in wretched districts and who were often illiterate mushroomed to cover a dozen of
Tunisia’s twenty-four governorates. The active solidarity ENDA develops is enterprising solidarity leading to
self-employment, a sine qua non for fighting against the lack of decent lives and precarious salaried status.
The various annual reports 6 and ENDA’s website throw light on the development and varying structures of
the microcredit granted by ENDA. Thus we can deduce that cumulatively, between 1995 and 2008, ENDA’s
2
See J.-M. Servet, 2006: Bankers with bare feet: Microfinance. Odile Jacob, Paris.
Microcredit Summit, February 1997.
4
State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign, 2002 Report.
5
See Jean Calais-Auloy: Right to consume, Dalloz, 2006, no. 327, p. 393.
3
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51 branches granted a total of almost 189 million dinars to 372,500 clients, despite a drop between 2006 and
2007 in terms of the number of microcredit loans granted. With a portfolio of 8.4 million dinars this
contribution will certainly increase both in amount and in number of active clients. And forecasts for 2012
show 350,000 active clients and liabilities of 242 million dinars.
In terms of gender structure, ENDA’s microcredit programme to wipe out poverty and unemployment and
guarantee the economic independence of people living in precarious situations via self-employment is mostly
concerned with women. Over the last four years, on average 82% of ENDA’s active clients are women.
Here we should show the difference in terms of structure by gender of the ENDA’s and the BTS’s clientele.
Men represent the majority of BTS clients, as appears in the following table.
Men
Percentage
Women
Percentage
2005
27,796
60%
18,517
40%
2006
33,997
58.2%
24,461
41.8%
2007
35,866
56.1%
28,095
43.9%
TOTAL
170,016
59.7%
114,684
40.3%
Source: BTS databank
As to the distribution per sector of the microcredit granted by ENDA, this shows a strong polarization
towards trade, and to a lesser degree crafts, with respective shares of almost 63% and 19%. Services and
stock rearing only take 18% of the total of ENDA’s liabilities. This is fairly striking compared to the BTS,
where distribution per sector of microcredit shows a predominance of the farming sector, with almost 38% of
allocated microcredit. Then comes trade, with under 20%.
Evolution of the number of microcredit loans per activity sector
2005
Improving
living 7,512
conditions
Farming
17,752
Traditional activities 2,789
2006
9,826
2007
11,313
TOTAL
44,917
22,336
3,535
23,877
3,894
106,178
18,891
Small crafts
7,532
8,120
38,820
12,261
2,968
58,458
13,160
3,597
63,961
62,639
13,255
284,700
6,034
Trade
9,996
Services
2,230
46,313
TOTAL
Source: BTS databank
6
Inter-Arab ENDA: ‘Support for micro-entrepreneurs’, 2005-2006 Annual Reports.
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II. Assessing study of microcredit through ENDA action
In Tunisia, microcredit means any loan aimed at helping towards economic and social integration. This
microcredit is granted to fund the acquisition of small input equipment needed for production or in the form
of working capital. These loans can also be granted to fund needs for improving living conditions 7 .
Natural persons are eligible for microcredit if they belong to needy families and vulnerable groups and are
able to carry on an activity, or have some qualification to exercise a profession, trade or activity in farming or
services and who are not wage-earners. The bodies that grant the microcredit are the associations that have
been set up and have obtained authorization from the Finance Ministry after an advisory commission has
given its approval. These associations can only be directed or managed by people capable of exercising that
power 8 .
1. Effects of microcredit
Microcredit loans aimed at fighting sustainably against poverty and socio-economic exclusion have also
become the main vectors of active or entrepreneurial solidarity. Thus they take on two objectives, one
economic and one social. This means improving the living conditions of the poorest people by granting loans
that are linked to the creation or extension of micro-businesses. Assessing their effects thus involves
analysing their economic and social implications, even secondary or disastrous effects.
1.
Socio-economic effects
Socio-economic effects refer to an appreciation of the variations caused by using microcredit on levels and
stability of incomes, repayment of debts, savings, consumption of beneficiaries and their access to basic
services, as a result of the creation or extension of the micro-business. These implications are more obvious
with the poorest people, for they signify economic security, a certain social recognition, less social exclusion,
more intrinsic motivation and greater awareness of the preconditions of a decent life.
Murdoch and Haley (2001) 9 stress the direct correlation between improving incomes and enhancing powers
of action generated by microcredit, and improvement of wellbeing caused by access to education, to care, to
family planning, to better sanitary conditions and to housing.
Anyway, overconfidence in taking a very favourable view of the nature of the effects of microcredit should
not prevent an admission that its features and extent are rather controversial. The main empirical impact
assessment and measuring studies bear witness to this divergence.
2.
Empirical impact measuring approaches
Although for some authors 10 microfinance has very beneficial socio-economic effects, other researchers 11 see
it as having no virtue, indeed, as having pretty negative implications. Such criticism is enhanced by a number
7
Organic Law no. 99-67 of 15 July 1999 on microcredit granted by associations.
8
9
See Ben Ayara Ikbel, ‘Microfinance and the fight against poverty’, Master’s thesis, Sousse FDSEP, 2008.
Murdoch J. and Haley B., 2002. ‘Analysis of the effects of microfinance on poverty relations’, ACDI Canada © 2011 British Journals ISSN 2048-125X
113
of impact studies that offer a mitigated view of the effects of microfinance12 . These studies amended the
nature of the effects and the methods of their appreciation and contested the reliability of the usual
assessment methods.
This questioning encouraged the launch of and recourse to the impact study method to appreciate the socioeconomic effects of microcredit. Thus, within the framework of the USAID’s (United States Agency for
International Development) AIMS project (Assessing the Impact of Micro-enterprise Service), and resulting
from the work of the World Bank’s Advisory Group for Assisting the Most Disadvantaged, use of impact
studies 13 was developed and encouraged.
Three considerations serve as principles legitimating the rise of the AIMS impact study methodology for
microcredit and the development/sophistication of the techniques crafted to assess the socio-economic
impacts of programmes on their beneficiaries. Firstly, highlighting the virtues of microfinance as a vector of
the fight against poverty and financial exclusion. Then, and as a direct consequence of the first, encouraging
public and private capital to invest in mutually supportive finance. Lastly, better identifying the real needs of
the clientele and optimizing their funding. Now the effects of microcredit are disparate and come under
differing headings, and any assessment must ignore what is intangible and focus on efficacity in terms of
profitability.
As the aim of this article is to assess the effects of microcredit granted by ENDA by using AIMS
methodology, we should first summarize the basis of this method.
3.
The AIMS tool
This technique is based around five tools for assessing the impact of microcredit on the client. Using these
five tools together offers a better appreciation and assessment of the effects, both quantitative and qualitative,
of microcredit. The constraints related to the administering of the questionnaire 14 submitted to ENDA clients,
and the non-availability of reliable, useable qualitative data, have forced us to use the first tool only. So we
have restricted ourselves in this research to the impact study tool that corresponds to the quantitative aspect
of the AIMS tool 15 . The four other tools concern respectively the study of client wealth, the study of credit
use strategies, client freedom and tool satisfaction of clients.
The impact study tool aims at appreciating and testing the truth of impact hypotheses. To this end, a 37-point
questionnaire was crafted and administered to two groups: a client group and a control group made up of
10
Pitt, M. and Khandker, S. R. (1998): ‘The impact of group based credit programs on poor households in Bangladesh: Does the gender of participants matter?’, The Journal of Political Economy 11
Adams, D. and von Pischke, J.-D.: ‘Microenterprise Credit Programs: Déjà Vu’, World Development, vol. 20, no. 10, 1992.
12
Murdoch (1998): ‘Does Microfinance Really Help the Poor? New Evidence from Flagship in Bangladesh’, article on
www.nyu.edu.
13
Creusot, Anne-Claude: ‘L’analyse d’impact en micro-finance’, Agridoc, November 2001.
14
Our warm thanks go to all the Inter-Arab ENDA staff who helped us craft and carry out this questionnaire and provided us with
a list with addresses and phone numbers of clients and future clients.
15
For more detail, see K. Barlet and C. Poursat: ‘Les outils d’analyses de la clientèle et de l’impact en débat’, BIM no. 1234, 19
June 2001.
114
future clients insofar as these are people who joined the programme but had not yet received a loan. The
hypotheses tested in this work deal with three aspects and differ in their understanding of the hypotheses
selected in the AIMS tools. Thus what follows is an impact study of the effects of microcredit granted by
ENDA at three levels.
First, at individual level, where an assessment will be made of variations in terms of resources, although
deprived of the client satisfaction element. Then, at the level of the activity, the analysis will try to appreciate
the effects on working capital, physical capital and management. Lastly, at the level of the community, the
investigation will look at an improvement in the qualification of labour and its ability to create selfemployment.
The sampling technique adopted is random sampling, it having the merit of forming a sample of easily
accessed subjects present in a determined place at a given time. Data treatment on the basis of elementary
statistics, numbers and percentages, and logistical regression, was done using SPSS version 13 software.
The sample was constituted in two phases. In the first stage we drew up a list of about forty people who had
been clients for three years and submitted our questionnaire to them to get longitudinal data. The selection of
this group had to respect the structure of mostly female ENDA clients. So this group was made up of thirty
women and ten men. As to the group of future clients, the control group, this was made up of about fifteen
people, with ten women and five men. The answers, and their treatment, enabled us to determine the effects
of the microcredit granted by Inter-Arab ENDA on its clients.
1. Individual effects
Individual effects are approached in terms of impacts on income, savings, property and management.

Evoluion of incomes
Both groups, clients and future clients, confirm that their income has improved clearly in the past year. Thirty
clients, i.e. 75%, in the group saw their income increase as against 11 (72%) of the future clients. For
variations in drop in income, the gaps are clearer: 15% of the first group as
against 20% of the control group. This drop is exclusively due to a drop in sales for the clients, while two
factors explain it, in fairly similar shares (45% and 50%), for the future clients, being drops in sales and loss
of jobs.
The gaps are not wide and so the chi-square statistical test seems fruitless. It follows that the impact of
microcredit on individual income remains relatively low. Furthermore, out of the thirty clients whose
incomes improved, 30% (ten clients) ascribe this improvement to a growth in sales on new markets, 15% to a
fall in costs and/or better management of stock, 20% to the creation of a micro-enterprise and 35% to the
development of the micro-enterprise. We find very similar proportions in the future clients group, with
percentages of respectively 27%, 18%, 23% and 32%. The chi-square test does not work, confirming the
significant insignificance of the difference between the two sub-groups.

Effects of microcredit on client savings
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85% of ENDA clients state that they have yearly savings whereas in the control group the proportion is only
50%. The chi-square value indicates the existence of a very significant difference between clients and the
control group of about 10%, thus showing an impact and clearly confirming that microcredit has had a
favourable effect.
To the sub-question of whether the savings were constituted and/or improved thanks to the microcredit
granted, 25 clients, i.e. 72%, answered in the affirmative. This gap signifies that the mutually supportive
finance practiced by ENDA gives rise to clear favourable effects on the micro-entrepreneur’s savings. The
variation in the rise of savings over the past year is seen in 65% of clients, whereas it is only true for 30% of
future clients. The gaps are even more significant in terms of variation in drop in savings, the proportions
being 12% for clients and 42% for the second group. The percentages of clients and future clients who did
not see their savings change over the same period is respectively 22% and 28%.
As the differences between the two groups are considerable, we used the chi-square test to verify the
significance of this difference. The value of this statistic shows that the said difference is not significant;
microcredit had no marked effect on variation in savings. This lack of significance is, we think, explained by
the tendency to pay off debts, the various expenses aimed at improving living conditions, and intra-family
solidarity.
This trend is widely confirmed by the answers dealing with devoting profits to savings. A small number of
clients (20%) say that they allotted the net profits of the micro-enterprise to savings, compared to 24% of
future clients. As the gap between the two groups is small, there is no need to have recourse to the chi-square
test.
As to personal motives and explanations of the improvement, the answers from the client group all refer to
three major things. Firstly, overcoming hazards and protecting against emergencies. Secondly, this saving is
intended to cover investment requirements and extension of capital. Lastly, the building of savings is
motivated by a new trend, one of wishing to pay off the microcredit before term to be able to get another
relatively bigger one.

Effect of access to property on the micro-enterprise
Almost everyone in the two groups, i.e. respectively 95% and 90%, are sole owners of the micro-enterprise.
The entrepreneurial subculture, misunderstanding of the business world, small size of the micro-enterprise’s
issued capital, the property and legal-economic power complex, and finally family help in managing and
financial set-up of, or extension of, the micro-enterprise are reasons advanced by both groups to justify this
anti-associative behaviour.
Through such behaviour the clients think they can control and better manage their exploitation. Since the
proportions are almost identical, chi-square tests are not needed. The microcredit granted by ENDA has no
effect on property-related behaviour.
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ii) Effect on management practices
Within the AIMS perspective, the effects on management culture are studied from two concomitant angles.
Under the first, the effects are partially characterised on the basis of answers provided by the interviewees.
The second judges the said effects by reference to the perception held by the investigator of the managerial
culture of the said people.
The first angle contains two management practice indicators, i.e. that of disentangling or not the microenterprise’s money from personal money, and the keeping of a book of accounts. Almost everyone in the two
groups, 92% and 90%, say that they keep the two categories of resource apart.
But the gaps are very clear for the second criteria. 60% of the clients keep up their own book of accounts,
enabling them to calculate the year’s results, as against only 25% of future clients. At this level, the chisquare value indicates that the difference between the two groups is significant; microcredit has a positive
effect on managerial culture approached by good practice in the calculating of the clients’ results.
Assessing the effects of microcredit on the basis of the investigator’s perception led to very similar
proportions in the two groups. Thus 5% and 3.5% showed great difficulties; a fairly slow time of response
and confusion of the sales/expenses profits/cost categories. 20% and 22% experienced some difficulties; 75%
and 74.5% of clients and future clients experienced no difficulty.
II.2. Impact on activity
From the ENDA perspective, microcredit is a vector of growth, enhancement, diversification of the country’s
productive fabric and job creation. The first microcredit institution in Tunisia, Inter-Arab ENDA sees its job
as promoting activities, assistance, and offering adapted services to a poorer, underprivileged population that
is developing in the informal sector.
By so doing, it enables this population to create personal micro-businesses that rely on a very limited
working capital, and are often settled as an outgrowth of the family dwelling. 54% of the clients work in this
dwelling and make it the premises for their operation. Despite this small size, microcredit enables its
beneficiaries to thus integrate within the economic circle and to make a modest contribution to the national
work of development. The above-mentioned geographical distribution allows us to anticipate that regional
gaps will be reduced at the level of the poorest people, thanks to this contribution.

Economically active people
As we argued above, the aim of Inter-Arab ENDA is to enable the most economically vulnerable people,
living in the greatest precariousness, to have access to self-employment to give themselves more decent lives.
And as the ENDA clientele is mainly female, the institution tries to give these women the status of
economically active persons, likely to develop activities that generate sufficient, stable incomes which should
allow them to improve their living conditions.
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The ENDA institution seems to have succeeded in doing this. Not only has it managed to fund a number of
micro-enterprises, far beyond the other microcredit institutions including the BTS, but it has been able to
attract a faithful clientele. Over 95% of its clients and nearly 90% of its future clients say that have recourse
to no other institution and in present conditions have no intention of transferring their loyalty, although they
could do so.
In terms of effects on economic activity and getting the status of economically active persons, the microcredit
granted by Inter-Arab ENDA is basically oriented (on average 80%) towards small trades, grocer’s, and
sellers of second-hand clothes and readymade wear. These activities do not require a ‘big’ investment in
premises, since they are usually set up adjoining the family dwelling and remain fairly informal. Trade does
not attract future clients so much; only 45% intend to do this or are already in trade, and trade is relatively
closely rivalled by crafts, representing over 37% in the control group.
A set of factors serves to various degrees to explain the choice of activity. The answers collected indicate that
the choice was made because it is a family activity for 20% of clients and 44% of future clients. 82% of
clients and 70% of future clients say that the activity attracted them because the product or service is asked
for, or seems profitable, or others have chosen it. Considerations related to the necessary working capital or
availability of money are relatively weak, since they were identified by respectively 5% and 20% only. The
chi-square value indicates the existence of a significant difference between the two groups.
As was stated above, the clients were more able to evaluate their operation in quantitative terms and adopt
better management practices. However, more non-clients than clients see the amount of working capital
necessary to carry on the activity as a factor to be taken into consideration to undertake an economic activity.
It is not surprising to notice this since the rate of illiteracy is higher for clients and zero for the control group.
The effects of microcredit on activity are clearer on the development of the activity or micro-operation itself.
In the client group, 76% say that their monthly turnover is much better since they got ENDA help, 15% say it
is stable and 9% say it has dropped. In the future client group, only 41% saw the volume of income increase,
47% recorded stagnation of this income and 12% noted a drop in the monthly income.
The same gaps are observed in terms of variation in monthly profits. These profits rose for 77%, no change
for 5%, and a drop for 18% of the clients. This drop concerned 32% of the future clients, 8% saw monthly
profits remain unchanged and 60% said their profits had risen. Chi-square values indicate the existence of a
significant difference between the two groups. The gaining of microcredit enabled the clients to perform
better in terms of developing their activities, and this development was expressed in greater profits.
Microcredit has a positive impact on clients’ sales and profits.
These profits are reinvested in the activity by 85% of clients and 60% of the control group. Such a difference,
statistically very significant according to the chi-square test, is explained by the advice given to the clients by
ENDA’s financial services. Such supervision is useful for sustainably developing economic activities, and
the clients invest more of their profits in their activity.
This investment enabled them to make changes in their activity, modernising or enlarging it. In the past year,
58% of clients said when questioned that they had made such changes by increasing the size of the activity,
72% said they had added new products, 15% said they had hired more labour and 22% had started up a new
118
activity. In the control group, the percentages are respectively 30%, 62%, 18% and 20%. This difference is
significant when the chi-square test operates. Such a difference remains however non-significant when the
chi-square test is inoperative.
II.3. Impact on the community
The impact of microcredit on the community has raised an amount of controversy, the two main visions
being opposed as to the nature of such effects. A first, ‘pessimistic’, approach was that of Adams and Von
Pischke (1992) and Rahman (1999). According to this approach, microcredit could not reach the poorest
people lastingly. Since underprivileged people suffered more from a lack of basic services than of one-off
financial aid and actions they did not show a real demand for microfinance services.
A second, positive, approach was that of Pitt and Khandker16 ; it refutes the above pessimism and attributes to
microfinance considerable virtues and power to cover a large proportion of poor people through financial
innovations calibrated in terms of products and services and awareness and popularization.
At the Micro-credit Summit in Washington in 1997, over 2,900 delegates from 137 countries met and
launched a nine-year campaign to reach 100 million of the world’s poorest families by 2005, especially the
poorest women 17 .
This last aspect tries to check at the scale and on the base of ENDA’s experience whether access to
microcredit has a favourable impact on job creation, and thus the fight against poverty and exclusion. 70% of
the clients say they have been helped in their activities as against 20% of the future clients. The proportions
are pretty well the opposite when the issue is doing the work alone: 30% as against 80%.
It follows that the microcredit granted by ENDA has a clear and very favourable effect on jobs and labour in
the micro-enterprises. The chi-square value shows a significant difference between the two groups. But
certain nuances should be noted about the labour occupied in the microfinance-funded activity. In the two
groups, 35% and 30% of this labour force is not paid. This difference is not significant, so the chi-square test
is inoperative.
CONCLUSION
Microfinance or mutually supportive financing is relatively recent in Tunisia. Its growth was particularly
driven by ENDA action, ENDA being the first microcredit institution in Tunisia. ENDA’s approach is
underwritten by that driving all microfinance associations; it involves giving loans to people living in the
poorest districts in Tunisia.
The development of microcredit enabled this institution’s action in improving the lives of the poorest people
to be assessed. We noticed that every year thousands of loans are granted by ENDA to these classes of
people.
16
17
See Pitt and Khandker, op. Cit.
See Ben Ayara, Ikbel, op. cit.
119
Thus it is advisable to probe the effects of this microcredit on the well-being of the institution’s clients. To do
this, an empirical study was done to analyse these effects. This study was facilitated by the study of the
AMIS impact and methodology tool and by using a survey done on two groups, ENDA clients and a control
group.
Three hypotheses were to be tested in this study, i.e. the impact of microcredit at the level of the individual’s
life, the impact on the activity and the impact on the community. The study showed that the hypothesis of
impact on individual life was proved, since the hypothesis of increased capacities of control over resources
was proved.
Proportionally more ENDA clients say that they ‘save’ than non-clients, and their performance seems slightly
better. These clients proportionally adopted better management practices and the survey showed a greater
correctness in their estimates of sales, expenses and profits.
The hypothesis of impact on the activity is also shown to be true since the hypothesis of increase in working
capital is proved. More clients invest their profits in economic activities. Thus the spirit of enterprise
develops better in clients who refer to activity-linked factors when deciding to start out. Over the twelve past
months, more clients related to changes made in economic activities and investment linked to this. The
hypothesis about improving management abilities is also proved. More clients adopted better management
practices, particularly by using management registers. Similarly, they showed more ease in estimating their
sales, costs and profits.
The hypothesis of impact on the community is also proved, since the sub-hypothesis of increase in labour is
proved as well; also, this labour force is more widely paid by the clients; however, the hypothesis of
improvement in labour wages has not been verified.
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Assessing Study of the Effects of Microcredit in Tunisia

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