Abstract:
Poverty poses as a great challenge and appears to be the
root cause of many problems such as increased crimes,
suicides, depression, illiteracy, malnutrition and many
others to name. Therefore, the emphasis needs to be placed
on alleviating if not completely eradicating poverty. For
this reason, the study is intended to identify and analyze
the impact of microfinance banks as a tool to alleviate
poverty in urban slums of Islamabad. The impact is studied
through variables like increase in incomes, increase in
employment opportunities and number of small businesses and
improved standard of living of the recipients of
microcredit. The element of carrying out the research with
reference to urban slums of Islamabad sets the study as
different from other studies of its kind. A sample of
ninety clients of different microfinance banks located in
Islamabad was selected and data was collected through
questionnaires and interviews/observation. After carrying
out detailed research and analysis, the results proved the
fact that provision of microcredit by microfinance banks
does play an important role in alleviating the lives of the
recipients by having a positive effect on incomes, standard
of living and number of small scale businesses.
