外文翻译---农业和经济增长、粮食安全并消除贫困之农村金融的角色-金融财政(编辑修改稿)

外文翻译---农业和经济增长、粮食安全并消除贫困之农村金融的角色-金融财政(编辑修改稿)内容摘要：

om the fact that transaction costs have a large fixed cost ponent so that unit costs for smaller savings deposits or smaller loans are high pared to larger financial transactions. This law of decreasing unit transaction costs with larger size transactions generates the tradeoff between improved outreach to the poor and financial sustainability, irrespective of the lending technology used. To cover the higher costs of these loans, interest rates need to either be set higher, or the MFI may follow a strategy of using economies of scale, scope and risk to cross subsidize smaller loans. Breadth of outreach (in terms of number of clientele) and depth of outreach (at present measured through the very imprecise, but widely used indicator of average loan size (or balance) in relation to percapita GDP are now regularly reported, . in the Microbanking Bulletin Wenner states that depth of outreach, specified as target maximum average loan size, has bee a criteria used by the IDB for certain instruments of (rural) microfinance policy. Financial sustainability of the financial institution and outreach to the poor are only two of the policy objectives of microfinance. The third policy objective relates to the impact of financial systems development, particularly on poverty reduction. When policy intervention and direct support for institution building requires public investments funded either by domestic or foreign taxes or donations, the question arises about the payoff or impact, for example in terms of economic growth and alleviation of poverty and food insecurity. Institutional innovation in microfinance following the new paradigm has relied on financial support by donors and governments and by other social investors such as philanthropic foundations. In fact, many, but not all, MFIs that reach large numbers of female and male clients below the poverty line require continued state or donor transfers to fully cover costs Moreover, most, if not all, of the MFIs featured in the Microbanking Bulletin that already reached financial sustainability have required public investment at some point in their existence, be it to enable technical assistance or to receive capital for going to scale so as to reduce unit costs. Some may consider these funds provided by governments, donors and other social investors as subsidies (with a negative connotation), but – from a policy perspective these funds constitute public investment (be it good or bad investment) in institution and systems building. Such public investments are justified from a public policy perspective if the discounted social benefits of public investment in microfinance are expected to outweigh the social costs. These costs include the opportunity costs of foregoing the social benefits of other public investments, such as in primary education . The subsidy dependence index has bee a widely accepted operational measure to quantify the amount of social costs involved in supporting the operations of a financial institution Addressing the policy question of whether such public investments are economically –not financially sustainable requires a parison of social costs with social benefits. This consideration raises welfare impact as an important third objective of microfinance. The triangle of microfinance, which reflects the three objectives of financial sustainability, outreach, and impact, is represented in Figure 1. MFIs attempt to contribute to these objectives (either indirectly through pursuance of financial sustainability leading to scale and serving many clients or directly through targeting poorer segments of the population) but many stress one particular objective over the other two. Donors, governments, and other social investors also differ in their relative emphasis on the three objectives. Some MFIs may produce large impacts (especially if financial services are coupled with nonfinancial services addressing other constraints of the poor) but achieve limited outreach. Others may make smaller impacts but are highly financially sustainable with a large breadth of outreach, and investments in such institutions may have a high cost efficiency in reducing poverty. The potential tradeoffs between depth of outreach and financial sustainability have been noted, but they may also exist between impact and financial sustainability. As Sharma and Buchenrieder argue, the impact of finance can be enhanced through plementary non financial services, such as business or marketing services or training of borrowers that raise the profitability of loan financed projects. Complementary services are sometimes offered by MFIs。