As i am writing this piece, i had a recent discussion with my former employee regarding the status of the project i left behind in Sierra Leone ( whilst i am currently studinying in Germany doing a master in Developemt finance) regarding portfolio performamnce of the microfinance institutions.

A gloomy picture was reveal to me that the portfolio quality of the microfinance institutions in my country Sierra Leone is gradually deteriorating with high Par some up to 15% . As i went back to ask the reasons for this ,his first was because of mutiple borrowing by the client and the second ineffective monitoring of client activities on the part of the institution. After a thorugh investigation it was realised that most of the client have solicited loans from varoius other microfinance institutions ( multiple borrowing) and with the market down they are unable to honor their repayment so they become expose in the light of the multiple borrowing.

In any case the issue of multiple borrowing is becomming a major threat and has the potential of sinkig some microfinance institutions in the mere future especially institution who are madly driven and focus on making profit at any cost..
The issue of competion amongst MFI's will act a breeding ground for the so call bad client to operate freely capitalising on the inability of the financial service providers to come to terms as a away to address the issue of cordination ie interms of sharing client information. It is going to be a real task to sort this problem otherwise it will continue in future.

In comming up with certain solutions, at times the size of the institutions interms of client number makes it difficult for some remedial measure that one may think to adopt (like coordination -through net working, sharing client photos, etc) In the technical area where you can desiged a loan product that will give them the chance to do multiple borrowing as an incentive so that the laon activity will be concentrated in one institution,, yet still some client can still obtain the loan product and at the samet ime go across and obtain another loan from another financial service provider.

In this regard, i ask that a world wide conference be conducted on the issue of multiple borrowing so that microfinance expert will come together and brain storm on this issue to be able to address the issue of multiple loan borrowing before it is too late especially in this electronic world.
I wll need a respone or feed back on this comment and your own suggestions on this issue

Hassan Conteh
Student
M.Sc Development Finance
Frankfurt School of Finance and Management
Frankfurt
Germany