Congratulations to Muhammad Yunus on his Nobel Peace Prize (NYT article on Nobel Prize for Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank). Yunus invented the concept of lending small amounts of money -- as little as $20 -- to the very poor so they can start small local businesses. Typical businesses include buying a cow to sell milk and craftspeople buying supplies. Since 1983 Grameen has loaned $5.72 billion to 6.6 million borrowers, with default rates less than 1.5%.
The Peace Prize is “a fitting acknowledgment that the ways of the market are not necessarily evil, that markets can be harnessed as forces of good” said Nachiket Mor, executive director of Icici Bank, India’s largest privately owned bank.
Grameen Telecom allows villagers to purchase a cell phone and then rent it out by the minute to the other villagers. In Bangladesh, where there are only 3 land lines for every 1000 people, this provides not only an entrepreneurial opportunity, but also a critical lifeline to the rest of the world. Here is a summary from the Grameen Telecom website:
Grameen Telecom (GTC) is a company dedicated towards extending the benefits of the information revolution amongst the rural people of Bangladesh. Currently GTC provides the GSM 900 cellular mobile phones to the villagers. Our corporate vision is to provide telecommunication services to the 100 million rural inhabitants in the 68,000 villages in Bangladesh. ... The Company is entrusted with the responsibility of providing telecommunication services in the rural areas in Bangladesh and also acts as a sales agent for mobile phones for individual urban subscribers. Our basic objective are to ensure universal telecommunication access for the villagers and provide other value added services.
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