Distance Course in Legislative Drafting for Democratic Social Change
Past Projects: Economics
Kyrgysztan:
Microenterprises lacked access to credit
Extremely low-income students cannot complete their higher education and instead remain unemployed, sometimes engaging in crime rather than contributing to the country’s economic development. This report proposes to offer government-subsidized loans for higher education to such students. The proposed solution extends scarce budgetary resources by issuing affordable Treasury bonds for the education fund and offering low-income families loans without requiring collateral if they hold bonds valued at one third of the loan amount.
South Africa: Micro-enterprise
Citizens of the province suffer high rates of poverty and unemployment, and the nation continues to lose jobs (especially for unskilled laborers). The proposed Micro-Enterprise Support Fund would extend credit (up to R5000), support services, and business training for citizens starting small-scale businesses and allow them to establish a credit history. The report also proposes a system for monitoring small-business progress and producing an ongoing legislative program that will prepare micro-enterprises to spur job creation and economic development.
Estonia: Difficulty in enforcing money claims
Government enforcement of judgments on money claims remains unreliable, so individual claimants pursue their claims through extra-legal means. Frequently, debtors fail to satisfy these claims at all. The proposed solution includes truth-in-lending requirements, rights of appeal to the courts, set terms for voluntary payment, protections for debtors, creation of a fund to pay child support claims until the debtor’s assets can be located and liquidated for repayment, financial incentives for bailiffs to enforce claims, and legal requirements for using private detectives to locate debtors and their assets.
|
