Nobel laureate of Bangladesh Prof Muhammad Yunus, currently on a visit to Pakistan, says the Pakistan government has done a lot of things in microfinance sector for poverty alleviation and uplift of poor. In a programme a conversation with Prof Yunus , he said the measures include creation of microfinance and Khushali (prosperity) Bank, political support and friendly policies of its central bank (State Bank of Pakistan). Yunus suggested that Pakistan has to ensure access to microcredit to all poor to achieve desired result in the right direction. Eighty per cent poor of Bangladesh have access to microcredit. The celebrity said as many as 1.2 billion people around the planet lack access to basic necessities and microfinance could be their pathway out of despair. Yunus runs Bangladesh s Grameen Bank, a leading advocate for the world s poor, that has lent more than $5.1 billion to 5.3 million people. The bank is built on Yunus conviction that poor people can be both reliable borrowers and avid entrepreneurs. According to the 2005 State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report in 1997 only about 7.6 million families had been served by microcredit worldwide. As of December 31, 2004, some 3,200 microcredit institutions reported reaching more than 92 million clients, according to the report. Almost 73 per cent of them were living in dire poverty at the time of their first loan, Yunus said.
