Sandro Georges Helal

This work puts the player in the microcredit segment featuring conceptual and historical aspects of the same. Assuming that the credit markets are imperfect that result in market failure and entail credit rationing, thus limiting access to certain social groups, particularly the poor, from enjoying access to credit and the benefits it provides both in the consumer segment and the production. Several initiatives throughout recent history have emerged to meet the credit demand for small borrowers. Has highlighted the personality of Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, the most important microfinance institution in the world today, as well as the C. K. Prahalad, theorist inclusion of disadvantaged - the Base of the Pyramid - the international capitalist process. Despite the exponential growth of microfinance around the world, critics emerged stating that it does not produce all the effects necessary for overcoming poverty, and that traditional measures of job creation and public policies to combat poverty would be more efficient. In Brazil microcredit programs emerged initially popular initiatives to gain air public policy with the promulgation of the Law of the Third Sector in 1999 and Productive Microcredit Program Oriented- PNMPO in 2005, leading the federal banks to act in this segment. The inability to access the credit market and banking services in general, bring another problem known as banking exclusion. The poorest and most isolated people geographically are those who feel more this problem, the work shows that there is strong correlation between lack of banking and poverty in Brazil. The emergence of correspondent banking has limited the opening of new bank branches, while it offers the most essential banking services, however, there is a great possibility of these correspondents become microcredit providers, expanding the spread of access to credit for the poor. Clearly this issue still deserves more complete and thorough studies. However, figures supplied by the Central Bank and the Ministry of Labor and Employment, realize growth in the volume of monetary resources offered under the microfinance and the number of participating clients. The success of many programs might be constated by several authors, enabling its members to overcome poverty. In all cases, microcredit is not the ultimate solution to poverty, but it is nonetheless an excellent tool that assists and helps the individual to take a step in the opposite direction to it. A combination of public and private measures including micro-credit could perhaps enhance the effects of combating poverty bringing faster and more efficient results.