Nobel laureate Yunus in Sarajevo: The goal is to reduce poverty to zero by 2030

Bangladeshi Nobel laureate Prof. Dr. Muhammad Yunus, founder of the concept of socially responsible business, has visited Sarajevo, and on that occasion signed a Memorandum of Mutual Cooperation with BBI Bank, writes the BH news agency Patria.

The agreement was signed together with the General Director of the Centennial Fund from Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Al-Mutairi.

Yunus is the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 as the founder of the concept of microcredit, credit lines for the poor who do not meet the conditions for classic loans.

This cooperation will include support for entrepreneurs focused on socially responsible business. This includes training through various campaigns and projects for the successful launch and development of self-sustaining businesses, with the target group being socially vulnerable population categories.

Yunus believes that society has unnecessarily imposed poverty on people and that creating a world without poverty is a matter of will.

- Microcredits have spread worldwide and are present in both rich and poor countries. Almost all poor countries are linked to microcredits, and this is the first Millennium Development Goal. We hope to achieve these goals by 2020, with the final deadline being 2030, which is the year when we will reduce poverty to zero, especially in Bangladesh - said Yunus.

He pointed out that global microcredits have created so-called grey microcredit, which extracts money from poor people.

- We created microcredit to help poor people, to feed their children, to find jobs for themselves, not to profit from them. The moment you take a bad microcredit, you can no longer function, but when you take a good one, you have fuel in your hand and you can start a business. This microcredit is understood as a basic human right and gains its meaning.

BBI Bank Director Amer Bukvić said that this bank wants to find partners with whom it will cooperate on the work and development of entrepreneurship and for the eradication of poverty.