A Comprehensive Study on the Effects of Microfinance Institutions’ Activities on Economic Growth of India

India has supported social banking for a long time. Policy directions to rapidly expand rural branches, mandate credit allocations for priority sectors (including agriculture), deliver large subsidy oriented credit programmes to serve marginal communities and poor households and control interest rates have been tried for over 35 years. For these purposes, microfinance industry is set to reach new heights. With superlative growth numbers in a period of economic downturn, the sector has come to attention of a wider range of investors. The rapid growth of the microfinance sector in the last few years has completely changed its complexion and nature. The growth has transformed microfinance: from being a sub-set of the development sector it has become a sub-set of the financial services industry. In the last two years competition amongst microfinance institutions (MFIs) as well as with the Self Help Group (SHG) movement has emerged India. This paper discusses the role of microfinance industry in country‟s economic growth in terms of its GDP. It also discusses the changed scenario in the competitive environment and the issues in microfinance institutions. Karl Pearson‟s coefficient of correlation is used to determine the role of microfinance in country‟s growth, which state a very high correlation between these two.