VARIOUS: Bangladesh's Grameen Bank and its founder Muhammad Yunus share the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize

Record ID: 349380

  • Title: VARIOUS: Bangladesh's Grameen Bank and its founder Muhammad Yunus share the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize
  • Date: 14th October 2006
  • Summary: (W3) DHAKA, BANGLADESH (OCTOBER 13, 2006) (REUTERS) STREET SCENE HEAD OFFICE OF THE GRAMEEN BANK, FOUNDED BY MUHAMMAD YUNUS LOGO OF GRAMEEN BANK (SOUNDBITE) (Benglali) NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER MUHAMMAD YUNUS, SAYING: "I am happy that a Bangladeshi's work has been recognised by the world, we could give a gift to the world, it is a great pride for our nation. It will erect
  • Embargoed: 29th October 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,People
  • Reuters ID: LVA7OAHE8DTL9L7ARYMRO2PJJBDP
  • Story Text: Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday (October 13) for grassroots efforts to lift millions out of poverty that earned him the nickname of "banker to the poor".
    "The Nobel Award Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006, divided into two different parts to Muhammad Yunus and Bangladesh's Grameen Bank for their efforts to create social and economic development from below. Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways to break out of poverty. Microcredit is one such means," said Ole Danbolt Mjoes, Nobel Committee Chairman.
    "If you think of the world on a long-term basis, then you have to have basis prerequisites for peace in the world, therefore social conditions, economic conditions, therefore human rights -- all those conditions are at the bottom of the further development of peace," he added.
    The victors were surprise winners of the 10 million Swedish crown ($1.36 million) award from a field of 191 candidates.
    Yunus, 66, set up a new kind of bank in 1976 to give credit to the very poorest in his native Bangladesh, particularly women, enabling them to start up small businesses. In doing so, he invented microcredit, a system that has been copied in more than 100 nations from the United States to Uganda.
    After hearing the news, Yunus was surrounded by well-wishers at his home in Dhaka.
    "I am happy that a Bangladeshi's work has been recognised by the world, we could give a gift to the world, it is a great pride for our nation. It will erect our head and we will be encouraged to do more big works.. The work we did aimed at eradicating poverty, we will work more on that so that no man remains poor," Yunus said.
    His supporters said the Nobel Peace Prize made the people of Bangladesh very proud.
    "This is a prize which Dr. Yunus deserved long ago. Bangladesh has given a new idea through Dr. Yunus about poverty alleviation, which not only has contributed to poverty alleviation programmes throughout the world, which is now part of poverty alleviation theories that are part of mainstream economic textbooks read all over the world. Microcredit is the largest single poverty intervention programme in the world. No other single intervention, or poverty alleviation has attracted so much attention throughout the world," said Wahiduddin Mahmud, a leading economist in Bangladesh and professor at Dhaka University said.
    Returning from a Fulbright scholarship in the United States, Yunus was shocked by the 1974 Bangladesh famine and headed out into the villages to see what he could do.
    He discovered the women were in severe debt to extortionate moneylenders, and Yunus's initial aim was simply to persuade a local bank manager to step in and offer the villagers regular credit. The banker said it was impossible without a guarantee.
    Yunus set out to prove him wrong and has never looked back. Grameen - the word means village in Bengali - has now disbursed $5.72 billion since its inception. Of this $5.07 billion has been repaid -- a loan recovery rate of
    85 per cent.
    Today the bank is 94 percent owned by the rural poor it serves and 6 percent by the government.
    The Nobel Peace Prize will be handed out in Oslo on Dec. 10.
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