By Alister Doyle
Sat Dec 9, 4:46 PM ET
World poverty could be consigned to museums if banks and governments stimulate the creative energies of millions of poor people, Muhammad Yunus, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, said on Saturday.
Mainstream banks will come under pressure to lend to the poor after the award to Yunus and his Grameen Bank, the pioneer of microcredits, the maverick Bangladeshi predicted.
"When it's said that a banker got the Nobel Peace Prize it sounds funny," he told a news conference on the eve of the award ceremony in Oslo, triggering laughter.
"A Nobel Peace Prize for a banker? Other (bankers) will say: 'What are we? Why can't we get one?"'
Yunus will receive the $1.5 million prize with his Grameen Bank, which specializes in microcredits to the poor.
"With the Nobel Peace Prize a lot of discussion will go on in the boards of the banks," said Yunus, whose autobiography is called "Banker to the Poor."
Mainstream banks still have not opened their doors to poorer people and Yunus said they could create specialized microcredit branches or invent new ways to lend.
"Go to the poorest people, even the beggars -- we lend money to the beggars," he said. "We have done it. You can do better than we did because you have longer experience."
Peace prizes usually go to politicians, campaigners for human rights or worthy U.N. institutions. Yunus, 66, said the 2006 Nobel Prize had shown "poverty is a threat to peace. It's been talked about but never said in such a resounding manner."
The award also showed the importance of including everyone in the financial system.
Set up in 1976, Grameen Bank is a pioneer of microcredits, tiny loans of perhaps $50 that enable poor people to start up businesses by buying a cow, some chickens or materials for weaving baskets or other handicrafts.
EASY LOANS
Unlike mainstream banks, Grameen does not demand collateral and willingly reschedules loan repayments. Grameen has 7 million clients in Bangladesh, 97 percent of them women and almost no one defaults.
Grameen has given interest-free loans to 85,000 beggars. The microcredit system had been imitated in more than 100 countries, from the United States to Saudi Arabia.
"Poverty museums" could be set up country by country, or city by city, as poverty was eradicated, Yunus said.
"If you continue to do that we will create a world which will be a poverty-free world and we will have a global poverty museum to say 'goodbye to poverty on this planet'.
"It's possible, and I believe in it," he said.
He said Bangladesh was on track to do its bit to meet a U.N. goal of halving the worst poverty by 2015. "If Bangladesh can do it, anybody can do it," he said.
Mainstream banks had been ignoring him for years, he said, but that was changing.
"When I screamed at that time people hardly heard me because my voice didn't go very far. Now with the Nobel Peace Prize I only have to whisper and the whole world hears loud and clear."
Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited.
Microfinance
An effective poverty reduction strategy
Microfinance is often considered one of the most effective and flexible strategies in the fight against global poverty. It is sustainable and can be implemented on the massive scale necessary to respond to the urgent needs of those living on less than $1 a day, the World’s poorest.
Microfinance consists of making small loans, usually less than $200, to individuals, usually women, to establish or expand a small, self-sustaining business. For example, a woman may borrow $50 to buy chickens so she can sell eggs. As the chickens multiply, she will have more eggs to sell. Soon she can sell the chicks. Each expansion pulls her further from the devastation of poverty.
Microfinance, the Grameen way, includes several support systems that contribute greatly to its success. Microfinance institutions offer business advice and counseling, while clients provide peer support for each other through solidarity circles. For example, if a client falls ill, her circle helps with her business until she is well. If a client gets discouraged, the support group pulls her through. This contributes substantially to the extremely high repayment rate of loans made to microfinance entrepreneurs.
An equally important part of microfinance is the recycling of funds. As loans are repaid, usually in six months to a year, they are re-loaned. This continual reinvestment multiplies the impact of each dollar loaned.
Microfinance has a positive impact far beyond the individual client. The vast majority of the loans go to women because studies have shown that women are more likely to reinvest their earnings in the business and in their families. As families cross the poverty line and micro-businesses expand, their communities benefit. Jobs are created, knowledge is shared, civic participation increases, and women are recognized as valuable members of their families and communities.
From The Grameen Foundation
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