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Hasina chairs concluding session

UNDP, Japan pledge fund for microcredit programmes
WASHINGTON. Feb 5: The United Nations Development Programme yesterday announced it would provide 41 million dollars to help sustain microcredit initiatives in 25 countries, reports AFP.
The programme, dubbed 'Microstart-. was the only concrete promise from government and international institution representatives attending the first World Microcredit Summit, which ended here Tuesday.
Microstart aims to provide loans and technical assistance over the next 18 months to microcredit institutions to help develop lending in developing countries. UNDP administrator James Spetch said.
Haiti. Morocco. Lebanon. Uganda, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Bosnia could benefit from the programme. Spetch said.
The United States pledged to continue funding the federal US
Agency for International Development (USAID), which distributes funds both in the United States and abroad.
The Japanese delegation said it would ask Tokyo to devote one per cent— roughly 100 million dollars — of its foreign aid to helping organisations that make microcredit loans.
World Bank president James Wolfensohn said the Bank would be "part of this effort"— meaning the summit's overall goal of boosting microcredit funds — but did not specify the manner of the institution's involvement.
First Lady Hillary Clinton. Spain's Queen Sofia and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed cochaired the summit.
"BSS adds: Sheikh Hasina chaired the concluding session of the three-day summit held here yesterday.
Hasina read out the commu-
nique Issued by the Council of • Heads of State and Government to the closing plenary.
While reading out the communique. Sheikh Hasina said. "We believe that successful antipoverty strategies must unleash the energies of people living in poverty and enable them to gain access to resource including capital, to improve their condition for themselves, especially their youth and children, and for society they live iri."
The communique noted that freedom from the bondage of poverty promotes education, health and increases the wellbeing of the people. The access of people to credit would enable them to work their way out of poverty with dignity, promote their effective participation in social, economic and political activities and would contribute to sustainable development, it said.