1. INTRODUCTION" In recent years much excitement has accorded the emergence of microfinance as a device for poverty alleviation and economic development. Microfinance, according to its advocates, creates the means for greater employment and income-generation, allows the poor to smooth consumption and meet social, religious and other obligations, offers financial protection from crises and disasters, encourages schooling and empowers the marginalised – especially women. Inspired by the example of such famous microfinance institutions (MFIs) as the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, MFIs of all types and sizes have appeared all over the world. A myriad of models and methodologies have been employed by these MFIs, but certain key principles stand out. These include a presumption that access to credit is more important to the poor than the price of that credit, the widespread use of group and progressive-lending as a substitute for collateral, the maintenance of low administration costs through simplified procedures, the mobilisation of savings through deposit products, and the use of intensive motivational techniques (McGuire and Conroy 2000:2-3). International donors spend around $US1 billion per year on microfinance, and by 2005 almost 100 million people had access to microfinance in over 70 countries (ADB 2005:17). One country greatly in need of the benefits promised by microfinance is Burma. Isolated for four decades, and for most of this time in possession of a financial system repressed in the familiar socialist pattern, in recent years the country has made certain faltering steps in the direction of financial reform. Notwithstanding these, access to credit and other financial services (especially in rural areas) remains greatly restricted. According to the UNDP (2003:9) the ‘lack of access to credit to purchase agricultural inputs? is the most important constraint to the capacities and incomes of Burma?s rural poor. Against this obvious need, various nascent microfinance schemes have emerged in Burma in recent years. Some of these are quite large, even by global standards, but their operations are scarcely known outside the country and the handful of NGO workers directly involved with them. The purpose of this paper, accordingly, is to attempt to shine a light on microfinance in Burma. The paper begins (Part 2) by examining the three large microfinance schemes in Burma that operate under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). This is followed in Part 3 by an analysis of some lesser schemes, most of which have been established by Western NGOs. Part 4 takes up the significant challenges to microfinance in Burma, and the barriers and opportunities to it forming the basis of a sustainable financial system. Part 5 concludes.