In this Issue

• Forthcoming events
• Training opportunities
• New in the library

From the Editors

A new year is upon us and there are many reasons to rejoice. With the current level of interest in rural and agricultural finance, many exciting things can be expected this year. New technologies are reducing costs of communication and transactions, new linkages among diverse entities open the doors for a wider variety of services, and closer integration of finance and agricultural value chains open new opportunities to provide financial services more effectively. New products are being developed to address some of the risks. Even agricultural prices are generally higher than in the past couple of decades bringing more resources and opportunities to rural areas.

Yet many challenges continue. The rural poor are most often not rising with the tide due to a lack of physical and financial resources as well as a lack of appropriate skills for the changing world. The costs of finance, especially microfinance, are often too high in relation to the returns to capital and slow turnover of capital in many agriculture and rural enterprise activities. Some of this is due to the lack of investment in infrastructure and new technologies which could reduce costs and raise profit levels. Another reason is the lack of a favourable environment for doing business in rural areas due to finance and trade restrictions or political and economic instability.

No one can solve the problems at hand but together we can make a major contribution. The Rural Finance Learning Centre was founded on the premise that generally the tools, the models, the policies and the experience that exist among us could provide a way forward for more and better financial services to all sectors of rural households and businesses and their service providers.

As we enter the New Year, we encourage each of you to share your learning, to learn what others have learned and to collaborate on improved policies and tools. As editors of the RFLC, we will do our best to help facilitate that process through making information and learning available in a synthesized and accessible form for all.

Finally to highlight one set of new materials, we would like to bring your attention to the link to the FARM website where the many presentations and documents of the recent Agricultural Microfinance Conference are hosted FARM

The RFLC editorial team