Credit for the Poor: Story of Grameen Bank, Bangladesh
1993
Yunus, M. (Grameen Bank, Dhaka (Bangladesh))
Traditional banking divides people into two groups: 'Creditworthy' people owning property that can serve as collateral and 'non creditworthy' people who hardly possess anything. Grameen has proved that it is possible to grant loans to 'non creditworthy' people without any repayment problem. After having tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the traditional banks of granting loans to the poor, Mr. Yunus and his colleagues established their own bank in October 1983. Nowadays, Grameen has 1,019 branches in 32,000 villages. They have 1.5 million borrower-members, 93 per cent of whom are women. Grameen also runs a development programme by means of, among others, loosing loans. Grameen's system of loans to the landless poor for whatever income-generating activity is surely a better way of tackling poverty than the huge foreign aid programmes which hardly influence the living conditions of the poor. Yet, Grameen firmly believes that eliminating poverty is not only possible but that it can be achieved fairly if we go about it in the right way.
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