When the Progesar Foundation microfinance office offered to lend her 4,000 pesos at an interest rate of 5 per cent per month, Nilda Peralta could hardly believe her luck. "It seemed there was a trick because the rate they were charging was so low," says the 57-year-old Argentine shopkeeper. "If I had borrowed from the money lenders I would have had to pay 28 per cent."
The money has allowed Ms Peralta to rent a small kiosk in a street just off the main square at Garín, a down-at-heel industrial town about 45 minutes from Buenos Aires. From there she sells everything from biscuits, cigarettes and soft drinks to nappies, sticks of glue and Chinese-made Power Ranger dolls, carefully noting down each transaction in a ragged- looking exercise book.
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