An international summit on micro credit opened Tuesday in Santiago, Chile with calls to large financial institutions to increase support for programs helping millions around the world who live on less than one dollar a day.
Queen Sofia of Spain joined Chilean authorities at the inauguration of the Latin American and Caribbean Micro Credit Summit.
Sam Daley-Harris, director of the Micro Credit Summit Campaign, originally scheduled to end this year, announced in his opening speech it had been extended through 2015.
The goal at the campaigns outset in 1997, to extend financial support to 100 million poor families, should be reached this year, officials said. Another 75 million families is the target for the next decade.
Through 2003, some 2.900 micro-financing institutions provided small loans to 81 million people, 82 percent of them women. Some of the loans have been as small as three US dollar (17 DKR) to help beggars start tiny businesses selling candy.
Muhammad Yunnus of Bangladesh, whose Grameen Bank is considered a micro credit pioneer, urged multinational lending institutions to increase their support for the campaign.
– Until now, the World Bank has contributed less than 1 percent of its portfolio to micro credit efforts, Yunus said.
Daley-Harris recalled that more than 700 legislators from five continents wrote to leaders of those institutions asking them to double their funding for micro financing.
– The responses by the leaders of these institutions have been disappointing, he said.
Kilde: The Push Journal
