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Microcredit summit hopes to raise $ 8b for the poor

From A Correspondent
NEW YORK Jan 28 The mi crocredit summit, to be held next week in Washington, will tiave at its centre a powerful advocate whose charisma may be waning among her very own but who is still a popular voice on the global scale First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has long been known for her interest in promoting the cause ol women and children will be chairwoman of the summit. A White House spokesperson has confirmed that Mrs Clinton is taking the summit "very sect
Trie meeting will also give Bangladesh s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina a rare opportunity to take the centre stage showcasing the success of Her
own country in extending mi-crocredil to the rural poor. especially landless women Bangladesh's Grameen Bank has already established itself as the premier microcredit organisation. setting a model for many countries, including the USA. to follow.
Describing Grameen Bank as the world's best-known microcredit institution, the New York Times reported on Sunday that the Bank has already lent one billion dollar to two million poor women and seen 97 per cent ol its loans repaid. Inis suggests that its clients are growing prosperous.' it wrote The Washington Post, which described Muhammad Yunus. Managing Director of the Bank.
as the godfather of the (microcredit) movement." also ran a similar story.
Tlie organisers of the meeting. which include several non government organisations and the United Nations, are expecting the attendance of four heads of state or government. Including Queen Sofia of Belgium. President Clinton Is also expected to show up. probably as a spectator, during one of the sessions. Sheikh Hasina is scheduled to chair one such session. When asked, a White House spokes woman refused to specti late on President Clinton's role at the summit. We are obviously attaching great Importance to the meeting, as evident from the participation of the First Lady.' she told this correspondent.
The organisers of the meeting are hopeful that the summit will generate wide global interest and re-energise the microcredit movement. Currently, over 2.5 billion people are considered extremely poor, living on one dollar or less a day. The organisers hope that by the year 2005. over 100 million poor people would have access to small loans, giving them a real opportunity to crawl out of abject poverty, il this is to happen, the microcredit groups will need a total of 21.6 billion dollar over the next eight years.
The organisers believe that the bulk of the money, about 8 billion dollar could be raised commercially. About 7 billion dollar would come from aid-giving countries and various multinational corporations would chip in some 2.5 billion dollar. Another 1.6 billion dollar would come from the developing countries themselves. The remaining 2 billion dollar would come in the form of new deposits from creditors.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
which is one of the principal organisers of the event, is cautiously optimistic about the success of the meeting. It is the first time such an event is taking place, a senior UNDP official told this correspondent. He, however, pointed out that development assistance is no longer a priority in many developed countries, "definitely not in the US." Donors now spend less than 60 billion dollars on development assistance, barely 2 pkr cent of which go for microcredit, he noted.
The conference will have the advantage of the presence of Muhammad Yunus, the best-known champion of microcredit. A personal friend of the Clintons. Dr Yunus’s own success may eventually quell many skeptics and encourage hesitant multinational corporations to begin forging an alliance with the growing microcredit movement.
As a prelude to the summit. Dr Yunus is scheduled to address a specially convened meeting at United Nations Headquarters on January 31. The meeting will give him an opportunity to explain once again why the poor are credible.