HALIFAX, Nova Scotia—Making the case for giving small loans to some of the world's poorest people has become a lot easier since Bangladesh's Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize this year for their work providing microcredit, Yunus said on Monday.
"We can now talk to policy-makers, the decision-makers around the world much more effectively than we could do it before," Yunus told a news conference during the Global Microcredit Summit, being held this year in this East Coast Canadian city.
"Ever since we started this work with Grameen Bank in Bangladesh there are lots of criticisms," he added, citing religious and political opposition. "So with the Nobel Peace Prize... many of (the critics) will die down, because it's not something they can ignore."
Yunus was awarded the prize last month along with Grameen Bank, which he founded. The bank has made more than $5.7 billion in tiny loans to poor Bangladeshis, the majority of them women. Its success has spawned scores of other microcredit initiatives globally.
"(There's) the kind of feeling that a poor woman is no longer a person to be ignored," Yunus said.
He said his focus now is on lobbying governments to create a legal framework for microcredit initiatives.
"For microcredit we need a separate, independent regulatory department because this is not to be left to the central bank to regulate because the rules of the game are different."
The commercial banking sector, constrained by conservative lending policies, is not typically a viable partner, he said, noting that those involved in microcredit tend to do it as philanthropic outreach and not as commercial ventures.
"The countries who try to do it through the conventional banks get a limited outreach."
Regulated policy would help meet new goals set by summit organizers to reach 175 million of the world's poorest families—identified as people who live on $1 a day or less—through microcredit by 2015.
The initial goal of reaching 100 million people by 2005 was set at the first microcedit summit, in Washington in 1997. Organizers said they expect to reach that target by the end of this year.
More than 2,000 delegates are attending the four-day Halifax summit, discussing a wide range of issues on microfinance.
Yunus's presence lent a star quality to the meeting, which runs until Wednesday, with diplomats and politicians lavishing praise on the banker to the poor.
"He inspires people everywhere he goes," Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay said at Sunday's opening ceremonies.
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