Big Finance Muscles In on Microlending
Monday, August 25, 2008
By Uwe Buse
Microloans were invented to help the poorest of the poor help themselves. Now major banks and pension funds are getting into the business, as they discover that the interest paid by the poor can produce high returns. Is it aid or exploitation?
Muhammad Yunus is one of the good ones, on a par with Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa. Like them, he won the Nobel Peace Prize and, like them, Yunus believes in man’s inherent ability to be reformed.
Yunus is a good speaker, whether he is speaking one-on-one, as he is now in his office, or in front of an audience, as he did less than two years ago when he was awarded the Nobel Prize at the city hall in Oslo. Yunus has a relaxed and easygoing way about him. Public appearances are part of his daily life, and he is used to winning awards. He already holds the World Food Prize, the Planetary Consciousness Prize and the Sydney Peace Prize.
Yunus is a good speaker, whether he is speaking one-on-one, as he is now in his office, or in front of an audience, as he did less than two years ago when he was awarded the Nobel Prize at the city hall in Oslo. Yunus has a relaxed and easygoing way about him. Public appearances are part of his daily life, and he is used to winning awards. He already holds the World Food Prize, the Planetary Consciousness Prize and the Sydney Peace Prize.
Yunus has an opinion on almost everything, and he is quick to express it. But when it comes to Shafiqual Haque Choudhury, Yunus suddenly becomes a man of few words, barely able to choke out “we’ll see.”Like Yunus, Shafiqual Haque Choudhury is also involved in the business of eliminating poverty. Choudhury, too, is eloquent, and clearly loves speaking to large audiences, but when he is asked about Yunus, he says, tersely: “He has his achievements.”
Yunus and Choudhury both live in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, a densely packed metropolis that expands farther into the surrounding countryside everyday. Both Yunus and Choudhury have built skyscrapers among the city’s run-down shacks. And there is another similarity: Both manage banks. Yunus is permitted to use the word bank to refer to his organization, Grameen Bank. But for legal reasons Choudhury’s organization, ASA, cannot call itself a bank. It is formally a non-governmental organization (NGO).
The two men ought to be able to work together rather effectively, and yet they avoid each other. They are competitors in many respects, and if Choudhury’s latest project is successful, they will likely become adversaries. Their dispute revolves around a single, but fundamental question: Should one be able to make money at the expense of the poor, if that means liberating them from poverty at the same time?
Choudhury says yes.
Yunus says no.
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