Grameen banking can work in RP, says lawmaker

A Liberal Party congressman hailed Muhammad Yunus, Bangladeshi microcredit pioneer, for winning the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, saying Grameen banking developed by Yunus was a non-conventional alternative to poverty alleviation that can work in developing countries like the Philippines.

Bukidnon first district Rep. Nereus Acosta, LP secretary-general, said Yunus’ Nobel Peace Prize was a re-affirmation of the growing global consciousness of innovative approaches to poverty alleviation.

Acosta trained under Yunus on Grameen banking in Bangladesh shortly after getting his doctorate degree in political science in Hawaii in 1994.

He has replicated his own version of Grameen banking in Bukidnon that has also benefited thousands of local residents, mostly poor women.

Yunus and the Grameen Bank that he founded won the Nobel Peace Prize for grassroots efforts to lift millions out of poverty that earned for him the monicker "banker to the poor."

Yunus, 66, set up Grameen Bank in 1976 to extend credit to the poorest in his native Bangladesh, particularly women, enabling them to start small businesses without collateral.

In doing so, Yunus invented microcredit, a system that has been copied in more than 100 nations from the United States to Uganda.

Armed with his training and upon the initiative of his mother, Socorro Acosta, then serving as congresswoman, they established the Barangay Unified Livelihood Investment through Grameen (BULIG), a replication of Grameen banking, a project of the Bukidnon Integrated Network of Home Industries (BINHI), a non-government organization composed of a small group of civic-oriented individuals in the community which the former congresswoman formed in 1988.

"BULILG-BINHI today serves 7,500 women in my district," Acosta said.

Based in Calanawan, Manolo Fortich, Bukidnon, BULIG-BINHI operates in over 250 centers in 140 barangays in the eight municipalities of Bukid—non’s first district.