Lend to beggars, Nobel laureate urges

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Oslo: World poverty could be consigned to museums if banks and governments stimulate the creative energies of millions of poor people, Muhammad Yunus, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, said on Saturday.

Mainstream banks will come under pressure to lend to the poor after the award to Yunus and his Grameen Bank, the pioneer of microcredits, the maverick Bangladeshi predicted.

"When it's said that a banker got the Nobel Peace Prize it sounds funny," he told a news conference on the eve of the award ceremony in Oslo, triggering laughter.

"A Nobel Peace Prize for a banker? Other (bankers) will say: 'What are we? Why can't we get one?'"

Yunus will receive the $1.5 million prize with his Grameen Bank, which specialises in microcredits to the poor.

"With the Nobel Peace Prize a lot of discussion will go on in the boards of the banks," said Yunus, whose autobiography is called Banker to the Poor.

Mainstream banks still have not opened their doors to poorer people and Yunus said they could create specialised microcredit branches or invent new ways to lend.

"Go to the poorest people, even the beggars - we lend money to the beggars," he said.

"We have done it. You can do better than we did because you have longer experience,” he added.

Peace prizes usually go to politicians, campaigners for human rights or worthy UN institutions. Yunus, 66, said the 2006 Nobel Prize had shown "poverty is a threat to peace. It's been talked about but never said in such a resounding manner".