ENI – The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank for pioneering small loans to poor people to set up in business, which has been hailed as a major boost for what is now called microfinance.
“Muhammad Yunus gave a new perspective for life to the 1.1 billion people that live on less than a dollar a day,” said Tor G. Gull, managing director of Oikocredit, an international church-supported microfinance institution based in The Netherlands. “Some 450 million of them have already been reached with small loans that help to build up their own sources of income and many more are yet to come.”
Sixty-six-year-old Yunus has been nicknamed a Banker to the Poor for setting up his Grameen Bank in 1976. This gave small loans known as microcredit to the very poorest in Bangladesh, particularly women, enabling them to start up small businesses.
Since then, the bank has been a source of ideas and models for the many institutions in the field of microcredit that have sprung up around the world, the Norwegian Nobel Committee noted in its citation.
