Building Up Business: Microenterprise Demand for Credit in the Caribbean

The present study investigates the role that formal and informal savings and credit mechanisms play in the financial lives of microentrepreneurs in the Caribbean, partly as an attempt to explain the relatively low outreach of microcredit in the region to date. Informal financing mechanisms studied include friends and family loans, moneylenders (unregulated “loan sharks”), store credit, and rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCA s).