Whoever heads the World Bank following the departure of Paul Wolfowitz should turn the organisation into a bank for the poor, microfinancing expert and Noble Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus said today.
Speaking to reporters after a conference in Berlin on development in Africa, Bangladeshi banker and economist Dr Yunus said the bank needed to change in order to appeal to the very people it was designed to help rescue from poverty. "Convert the bank into a bank for the poor, that the poor people in the world can look up to it and say 'yes, this is for us, we can use this,'" Dr Yunus told reporters.
The World Bank has been criticised by some, especially in developing countries, for tying crisis loans to tight national austerity programmes that can cause hardship.
Calls for change could follow from the controversial two-year tenure of former US deputy defence secretary Wolfowitz, who was forced to stand down over his handling of a substantial pay rise for his bank-employee companion. Germany was among the most outspoken critics of the former bank president, arguing that his behaviour undermined attempts to foster good governance in developing African economies.
Dr Yunus and his Grameen Bank won recognition from the Swedish Nobel Foundation in 2006 for lending small sums of cash to poor traders and entrepreneuers who would otherwise not have access to traditional banking or credit facilities. Some 50 million people have benefited from the system, around 80 per cent of whom are women, German Development Minister Heidemarie Wiezoreck-Zeul told a news conference with Dr Yunus. "We need to do this more so that every single human being has access to financial services," Dr Yunus said