Governmental incentive policies can help in this. For example, governments could subsidize, for a defined interim period, the increased overhead costs that banks would incur in lending to the poor. If the aim were to serve about 120 million poor a year--every tenth poor person this could cost some $10 billion.
The poor know best their opportunities for productive and remunerative work. What they really need are modest amounts of start-up capital for their microenterprises.
As one study put it, the old parable about feeding people for a day by giving them a fish, or feeding them for life by teaching them how to fish, needs a 20th- century postscript: what really matters is who owns the pond.