NORWAY: Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus gives speech in Oslo ahead of award ceremony

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 (December 9). 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. "A banker got the Nobel Peace Prize it sounds funny," Yunus told a news conference on the eve of the award ceremony in Oslo, triggering laughter. Yunus will receive the $1.5 million prize with his Grameen Bank, which specialises in microcredits to the poor. Yunus believes his Nobel Peace Prize will spark a lot of discussion in the boards of the banks Mainstream banks still have not opened their doors to poorer people and Yunus said they could create specialised microcredit branches or invent new ways to lend. "This is a very strong message they have to look at it and find a way. And I suggest to them, well you can create specialised branches, microcredit branches. Specialise them, train the staff about the way we do things, or you can invent your own you don't have to copy our matter. You create your own ideas to go the poorest person, even the beggers" he said 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". 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. 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. "So Bangladesh which is a huge population of 145 million can reduce the poverty by half by 2015 this would be an exciting experience for the whole of the world. If Bangladesh can do it anyone can do it. So this is where we are on the track and microcredit definitely helps, but microcredit alone doesn't solve everything. Microcredit provides a platform, all the tools to unleash the energy of individual human being, the poor people. They have all the energy in them," Yunus said. Grameen has given interest-free loans to 85,000 beggars. The microcredit system has been imitated in more than 100 countries, from the United States to Saudi Arabia. Yunus said country by country he hoped the microcredit system could eradicate poverty, leaving it to be remembered only in poverty museums. "So that anybody that would like to see poverty in that country would have to go to poverty museums, and we can do it city by city," he said. Mainstream banks had been ignoring him for years, he said, but that was changing.

ITN Source | December 10, 2006

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