Corruption, sexism and thrift

In the podcast called “Corruption, sexism and thrift” 3 problems were mentioned, namely:

1. Sexism

If you look around you will see, that most boardroom tables belong to men. It happens in the developing world and in the rich world too. In the US women make up only about 15% of board members, in the UK it is just 12%. The British government asked former banker Law Davis to produce recommendations for change next year. According to his words, women make up about 51% of the population and about 46% of the economic workforce. But if you take the top 250 British companies only 7% of the representation of the board are women. British companies need more women on board, because that will be better reflection of society and companies will get better performance. He thinks there will definitely be new rules. Ideally he doesn’t want to go to quota (or legal rout). That’s what we can see in Scandinavia, in Norway for example (they have quota of women on board). Law Davis is not convinced that it is the only right course of action; on the other hand it’s one of the options. On the whole, employers and boards should be more flexible to engage women.

The next speaker was Joe Dickson. In the past she worked on the top of the British bank and she was on the board of Premiership football club. Now she is on the board of 2 stock market listed companies. The first time she got a board position was in Newcastle United football club. There was an extremely male environment, which was difficult for her. It was quite rare that she managed to get on board, as it was “male work”. She says it wasn’t an environment that was very conductive to a normal business practice. She agrees, that not many women are applying to go on boards and they are making perfectly logical choices to stay in middle management, because they have a better life there, they won’t have 24/7 job, therefore they have time for their family and, besides, they earn enough money. She thinks that, if the organizations could flex their own approach to working, they would get a bigger pool of talented people.

2. Corruption

            The annual corruption barometer from International Transparency polls the views of ordinary citizens. And this year international effort to curb corruption is failing dismally. The vast majority of the almost 100000 respondents said they believed corruption in their country was getting worse. The fact is that in many countries bribery and corruption is the backdrop to everyday life.

            If you have a contract and you have an agreement to pay an agent, written into the contract, you are both interested in how much you will pay, then you don’t call it bribery but in fact you are paying back an agent. In most cases what you are paying to these people is money. For example, your cost is $20 million and you want a tender on it. Then they tell you that they are gonna give you $25 million, but you should give them the rest. It is their money you are giving back to them. It is bribery in way but it’s a revenue mutual to the business.

            There are a lot of countries where corruption is minimal only because we call it corruption. If we call it lobby, then the level of corruption will increase. In the US they pay congressmen to get contract in a certain area, they pay for campaigns. So, it is like corruption.

            There is a moral obligation for people to refuse to pay bribes, but there is also a moral obligation for them to make sure that their workers have work to do, that they are not starving etc.

3. Thrift

            Cycling is not what it used to be: it helped poor people travel cheaply. Nowadays people who drive cars prefer cycling in their time off. In Britain a market research group estimates that in 2005 5,6% of the population rode bikes  regularly, last year that figure was 9,1% and combining with occasional cyclist the number rises even to 18%. According to statistics, people with 2 cars are more likely to be regular cyclist that those with 1 or none. Historically you rode bicycle if you were poor. But it is just not the case anymore. It’s more than just affluence. For many people a branded bike makes a healthy fashionable statement about their affluent lifestyle. For the cost-conscious commuter it saves on high fuel prices. The contradiction explains why the bicycle market continues to grow in the recession. 

Microfinance crisis

This time I have listened to the podcast called: “Microfinance crisis”. This podcast is dedicated to the risk, which borrowers of microcredits take. Here is the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00c343p

            The duration of this podcast is 18 minutes but I’ve listened to it till the end because it was a really interesting record. During the first listening I understood almost everything, because English of the speakers wasn’t that fluent as English wasn’t their native language. But I listened to this podcast twice, because I needed to jot some ideas down during the second listening.

            This podcast is about so called microfinance. Microfinance (or microcredit) was born in Bangladesh in the 1970-s and operated by non-profit making groups. But international lenders and mane western governments led the industry to a great commercialization and aggressive marketing. The idea of microcredit is simple: it provides small loans to poor people, who have no other access to banking system. So, microcredit empowers poor people across the world to start their own business and create economic growth. But in some cases it pushes poor borrowers into taking high cost loans they can’t afford. The borrowers often don’t know the interest rates or the terms and conditions of the loans. Many microfinance agencies charge interest rates of 20-50%. After series of complaints over exorbitant interest rates and stern debt collection methods Bangladeshi authorities have now kept the interest rate at 27%. Reports of suicides among the desperate people unable to repay microfinance loans have rocked the industry in Bangladesh. There is more than a thousand microfinance institutions in Bangladesh now. We can see the same situation in India. India’s microfinance industry is reported to be facing a possible collapse as almost all the borrowers in one state Andhra Pradesh have stopped repaying their loans. Politicians there have accused the industry of profiteering from lending tiny amounts to the poor. They have introduced tough new laws restricting how the companies can lend money and forbidding intimidation of borrowers, who can’t pay.
The main problems of people who take microfinance loans are:

·         A borrower has to start repaying money from the first week after money is borrowed. But not everyone can make weekly repayments:

·         The majority doesn’t buy an additional piece of land, machinery to start some business or upgrade it, they don’t develop their skills on the money borrowed. But as we can remember, microfinance is aimed at business developing.

I think that microcredit can be a “death-trap”. People who borrow money and can’t pay it back, borrow money from another source to cover their debts and so on. As a result, they are becoming poorer and poorer.