JEDDAH, 17 September 2006 — The present banking system in the world does not cater to the needs of one third of the world’s population, according to a Bangladeshi expert in the field of banking.
Muhammad Yunus, president of Bangladesh’s Gramin Bank, a bank that has served lower income customers over the past 35 years, said in a function on the occasion of his visit to the Abdul Latif Jameel’s Community Service Programs yesterday in Jeddah.
“In its experiments in helping out the poor, the Gramin Bank stretched most of the prevailing banking regulations in the world,” Yunus said in a reception at the ALJ premises.
Welcoming the Bangladeshi banker to the offices of the ALJ Community Services Program, Muhammad Abdul Latif Jameel, president of ALJ, said he planned to implement several new schemes to combat poverty by providing employment opportunities to the unemployed with the cooperation and expertise of the Gramin Bank.
Yunus also met with several of the beneficiaries of the ALJ program besides and offered business-development loans to some Saudi families. The economist also visited various institutions including the Saudi-Japanese Institute of Cars, The Faculty of Economics and Administration at the King Abdul Aziz University, Nafisa Shams Vocational Institute for Women, ALJ Center for Rehabilitation.
The visiting bank official delivered a lecture at the Islamic Development Bank shedding light on the methodology of fighting the poverty.
“The essence of the bank’s activities could be summed up as the conversion of little sums of money to instruments of great social value,” Yunus said.