On October 8, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved, by unanimous consent, a bill (S. 3032) that would provide small loans to entrepreneurs and small business owners in developing countries. Sponsored by Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), the measure would allocate $175 million in FY2003 and $200 million in FY2004 for the microenterprise loans administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). A similar House-passed measure (H.R. 4073) would allocate the same funding levels (see The Source, 6/7/02). Congress allocated $155 million for these loans in FY2001 and FY2002.
Both the House and Senate measures would require USAID to measure the poverty levels of potential loan recipients as a way to guarantee that half of the loans are given to the bottom 50 percent of inhabitants living below each country’s poverty line or to those who live on $1 or less per day.
