Microfinance promotes initiative to serve refugees in Latin America

The Microfinance Foundation of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) has started a project to serve refugees in Colombia, Peru, Chile, Panama and the Dominican Republic with microcredits.

The Microfinance Foundation has started the program through a communal bank in the five countries of the region where it has a presence and where it has been able to implement other social and corporate responsibility programs.

Through the Foundation, only in 2021, some 79,000 migrants, including displaced persons and refugees, were assisted in those Latin American countries, in coordination with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, (UNHCR), according to data from the entity.

Refugee migratory flows are estimated at about 100 million people around the world, according to estimates by the United Nations and the World Bank, based in Washington, which has asked governments and the private sector to boost their platforms to insert migrants into productive life.

Most of these diasporas flee for various reasons, ranging from persecution, human rights violations, citizen insecurity, inclement weather, among other causes, which implies a challenge for their incursion into the places of destination.

For the economist Mayquel Marenco, it is imperative in this situation of displacement to open assistance portfolios according to the needs of these vulnerable groups, but also from a perspective of job placement opportunities in their new destinations.

“It is essential that these mechanisms exist from a socioeconomic perspective because the economy is closely linked to people’s quality of life, both family members who stay behind and people looking for new opportunities,” said Marenco.

For this expert, initiatives like this must have the support of accompanying programs that allow the full development of the economies of migrant and refugee families.

The lines of joint work between BBVA and ACNUR have been going on for 14 years, when they began with a pilot program in Panama to offer small disbursements for productive projects and migrant entrepreneurs.

Venezuela has led a crisis of displaced which registered last year more than 5 million migrants in search of new horizons in neighboring countries, in the rest of the American continent and Europe. Peru and Colombia have hosted the largest number of Venezuelans fleeing their country.

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