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Plenary Session: Ensuring Impact

International Year of Microcredit

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Prof. Muhammad Yunus, Managing Director Grameen Bank, Bangladesh

It has been a very exciting day today coming together to celebrate the Microcredit Summit +5. Like you, I was also recollecting the summit of 1997. You all came, you all came not knowing what it will produce at the end. We have gained tremendous enthusiasm in something we believed in. We wanted to do something about poverty, and we ended up by adopting a goal of reaching 100 million of the poorest families, preferably the women of those families with microcredit by the year 2005. Now 2005 is not too far away. We are very close now. But when we came we had a lot of enthusiasm, but very modest experience. As Sam was explaining, we had about 7.6 million microcredit borrowers at that time, globally...Now five years since then we have come a long way. When the figures were shown on the screen, 27 million [that's] 20 million more than there were in 1997.

We had lots of debates in Washington whether 100 million is a reasonable number. Everybody thought it was too big, people who didn't belong to Microcredit, the Press, experts from outside. We kind of defended our number, 100 million. We believed that we can make it. Now today five years down the line its not 27 million that are shown, that was 2001... 2002 I think it should be around 35 million now..., Which is one third of the way we have covered. And if you add one more year, 2003, next year I think we can all confidently say we will safely cross the half way mark, and in some journey if you can cross half way mark, you are there. And we will be there, we mean it. We put that 100 million not because it was a nice round figure, but because it was half the number of poor families in the whole world. That is why we wanted to do this, and reach them we will.

If we can come half the way, 50 million mark next year, I don't think any force on earth can stop us from reaching 100 million in next few years...

When we were discussing in Washington, about 100 million, there was no Millennium Development Goal at that time. Today the whole world has promised, all the leaders of the world have promised. They have committed themselves to reduce the number of poor people by half by 2015. Do they really mean it? I hope they do. If they really mean it, they will embrace us, all of us who are in microcredit, because their job will be made so much easier. With 100 million of the poorest families already reached by microcredit, we can make the 2015 goal a reality with all our experience with other goals.

Do you remember those goals? Education for all by the year 2000, Health for all by the year 2000. 2000 is gone. Education is not there. 2000 is gone. Health is not there. But this time, we don't want to have that kind of promise of 2015. We want to reduce the number of poor people by half by 2015 and microcredit will lead the way because if you can build the microcredit framework every other program that you undertake to eliminate poverty will work. If you do not have the microcredit piece in there, it is extremely difficult, extremely difficult to get there.

You saw on the screen all the beaming faces. Microcredit is not just money; you can look at $30 loans, $50 loans and see what it does. It is the transformation of individual human beings, which is at the core of microcredit and that is what you need when you want to change the world. Transform the person because it is the person who will change the world. It is the person who will change her life. It is not the government's handouts which will change the life. So with that, if anybody is seriously thinking about the goal of 2015, we should be thinking very seriously about putting that microcredit piece together.

If for any reason, we don't reach 100 million by the year 2005, it is not because of any lack of technology of microcredit. We have varieties of microcredit technologies available right now. It is not because there are not enough committed people on the ground. This is one program where you will have thousand and thousands of committed people working very hard to make it happen...When you talk about Millennium Development goal of 2015, you don't see that mechanism of implementation making it happen on the ground. ...Microcredit puts those numbers very precisely, every dollar every cent is recorded. Every poor person is recorded, progress is recorded. That's a big help.

So today, in the Microcredit Summit +5, one third of the way already covered and half way mark in sight, we prepare ourselves for getting there at the 100 million mark. Today I am particularly very very inspired by seeing you President Vicente Fox. You were a wonderful host for us in Puebla. Today you come here not only as President of Mexico. I look at you as a leading practitioner of Microcredit.

I don't know if all you know that he can take the front seat among the practitioners anywhere of microcredit because when we got to know each other he got so fired up about microcredit that he immediately wanted it in his state, Guanajuato, where he was governor. And I was trying to explain that you can't do it that way. You need preparation. He was so impatient. I was kind of running away from him. But he would not give up. I said the best thing you can do, you choose your most reliable persons, who really will do it, and then send them to Bangladesh. Find out what it is. It sounds nice when you speak, but unless you see it on the ground you will not realize what it is. So somebody must know what it is. And I left. I thought he was prepared by that time to go home. And few days later I get a letter, "Yes I am sending three people," and he did. They worked very hard in Bangladesh to find out what we do and came back and that was the beginning of the microcredit program in Guanajuato. And when he became President, he wanted to bring it all over Mexico.

And I must tell you how difficult it was for him to come here, because I have seen him struggling through it, persuading his staff who were totally opposed to his coming here. Because of the other engagement which were extremely pressing. And he made it. He was stubborn and said "I am going to go because this is microcredit. And he came and we thank you very much, You inspire us all.

And I promise you behalf of all here, all the practitioners, you as a practitioner, we'll give you the good news of crossing the half-way mark very soon. And by the year 2005 also we give you the good news that we have made it to 100 million. Thank you very much.

Read remarks by Sam Daley-Harris