Micro-lenders in the country, which were finding the going tough on credit quality, have witnessed a 33 per cent improvement in delinquency by number of accounts, credit information company Equifax said today.
“The delinquency by number of accounts that are more than 30 days outstanding has declined by more than 33 per cent from above 1.5 per cent in mid 2012 to around 1 per cent in April 2013,” Equifax said in a statement issued here.
Equifax Credit Information Services said its membership base exceeds over 100 MFIs or over 90 per cent of the NBFC-MFI industry.
“The decline in delinquency rates is great news for Indian Microfinance and Banking industry,” Equifax’s managing director and chief executive Sanjay Patel said, claiming that use of credit bureaus and related tools has helped the sector.
Problems for the MFIs started around three years ago, after alleged suicides by some borrowers in the state of Andhra Pradesh, which had the biggest concentration of business for the institutions.