In a recent speech, the pio­neer of micro-credit Muham­mad Yunus, again bragged about micro-credit banks expand­ing even dur­ing the severe global reces­sion. With many big banks col­laps­ing dur­ing that time, Yunus called on the banks to become more inclu­sive, not only for their own sur­vival, but for the good of mankind.

From the Thain­dian News, we read some quotes from Yunus.

“While big con­ven­tional banks with all their col­lat­eral were col­laps­ing, micro­cre­dit pro­grammes, which do not depend on col­lat­eral, con­tin­ued to be as strong as ever,” said Yunus, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Bangladesh’s pio­neer­ing Grameen Bank.

“Will this demon­stra­tion make the main­stream finan­cial insti­tu­tions change their minds? Will they finally open their doors to the poor?,” he asked while deliv­er­ing the sec­ond Pro­fes­sor Hiren Muk­er­jee Memo­r­ial Annual Par­lia­men­tary Memo­r­ial Lec­ture in the Cen­tral Hall of Parliament.

“I am quite seri­ous about this ques­tion,” Yunus said, adding: “When a cri­sis is at its deep­est, it can offer a huge opportunity.”

“When things fall apart, that cre­ates the oppor­tu­nity to redesign, recast, and rebuild. We should not miss this oppor­tu­nity to redesign our finan­cial insti­tu­tions. Let’s con­vert them into inclu­sive institutions.”

Yunus said that poverty is cre­ated by defi­cien­cies in the insti­tu­tions that we have built. Point­ing fin­gers at big finan­cial insti­tu­tions in the world, Yunus said: “They refuse to pro­vide finan­cial ser­vices to nearly two-thirds of the world’s pop­u­la­tion. For gen­er­a­tions, they claimed that it could not be done, and every­body accepted that explanation.”

This allowed loan sharks to thrive all over the world, Yunus said and added that his Grameen Bank in Bangladesh ques­tioned this assump­tion and demon­strated that lend­ing money to the poor­est in a sus­tain­able way was possible.

Read more: http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/business/micro-credit-programmes-beat-global-meltdown-muhammad-yunus_100286889.html#ixzz0ZD54zmgd

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