The household, firm, and financial institution surveys conducted in Menya were part of an impact evaluation of an intervention that never took place. The original intervention was an expansion of microcredit to rural villages in Upper Egypt where formal loans were virtually non-existent. The objectives of the impact evaluation were the following:
1) to evaluate the economic and social impact of microcredit on individuals who previously did not have access to formal credit
2) to assess the pilot phase of what could have been a nationwide lending operation using the infrastructure of the Egyptian Post Offices, which was funded by the World Bank's "Enhancing Access to Finance in Egypt" loan and led by the Egyptian Social Fund for Development (SFD).
The Egyptian Social Fund for Development and one of its microfinance institution counterparts identified 25 villages in Menya, in which they were equally interested to expand microfinance operations. The World Bank impact evaluation team used a pair-wise randomization process to assign these villages to treatment and control groups. Only baseline data collection was implemented. The expansion of microfinance project was unexpectedly canceled due to political instability and economic uncertainty in the spring of 2011.