Abstract:
Poverty is the state of being without associated with need hardship and lack of resources
across a wide range of circumstances. There are three sector of poverty in Sri Lanka.
Which are rural. urban and plantation. The history of poverty alleviation programmes go
back to the post liberalization period. But Sammurdhi programme is one of the national
programme for poverty alleviation which began its operations in August 1994. It is the
largest government sponsored micro finance programme in Sri Lanka. Micro finance
refers to the provision of small- scale financial services, which included savings, credit
and other financial services such as insurance.
Main objective of this paper analyses the impact of micro finance on alleviating poverty
in Sri Lanka with objective assess the impact of sammurdhi saving and credit
programme for the upliftrnent of living condition of poor by income, production and
welfare as well as programme outreach in providing those social benefits to its clients.
Based on the information collected from five Sammurdhi bank and 20 sammurdhi holders
were randomly selected from Kegalle District in Sri Lanka. Secondary data collected
from various sources such as books, internet, journals and reports.
The followings are the finding of the survey. Sammurdhi credit scheme seems to assist
people mainly in sustaining their current survives, the majority of the clients have
graduated to higher loans for the development of their projects, some additional
employment opportunities have been created by the credit scheme, some youth have been
attractive to the scheme, the saving habit developed by the bank, the impact of the
programme for the improvement of the living condition, higher women participation has
a link with the living stand of the households.
In other hand those promoting factors, the field has found some measures that should be
improved for better outreach of the programme. The bank has clearly had a significant
outreach in rural areas than sub-urban areas, nevertheless the member ability to cope with
uncertainty is questionable as some of them still depend on money lenders for emergency
situation, and poor management skills.
