Brazil banks on financial inclusion through government transfers
by Denise Dias : Thursday, November 5, 2009
Bolsa Familia is a conditional cash transfer program that delivers monthly allowances to the poorest 12 million Brazilian families, including indigenous people in extremely remote areas. The transfers target the “head” woman in each family, who is then responsible for fulfilling a number of “conditions” such as keeping the children in school and keeping up with their vaccination schedule. The total number of people impacted by Bolsa Familia is around 45 million (family members and others). In the outset of the financial crisis, the Brazilian government increased the program from 11 million beneficiaries to over 12 million.For more than a year, the Ministry of Development has been planning to add financial inclusion to the cash transfer program, not only to give the beneficiaries an opportunity to access services (financial access is considered a right in Brazil), but they believe that financial access could somehow work as an “exit tool”, i.e. help the beneficiaries build up assets through savings and access to credit and reach a point where they don’t need the cash transfer anymore. The financial inclusion program intends to reach 12 million beneficiaries, their families (45 million people), but also the other 15 million people that are identified, mapped and classified as “poor” by the Ministry of Development, but who, at the moment, are not part of Bolsa Familia.
