On November 13, the Senate approved, by unanimous consent, a bill (H.R. 4073) that would provide small loans to entrepreneurs and small business owners in developing countries. The measure, which has been sent back to the House due to technical changes, 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). The House-passed measure would have allocated the same funding levels (see The Source, 6/7/02). In FY2001 and FY2002, Congress allocated $155 million for these loans.
In addition, both the House- and Senate-passed 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.
