UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The United Nations launched 2005 as the international year of microcredit, an innovative financing scheme aimed at helping the world's poor help themselves out of poverty.
Capping a week of ceremonies, UN officials kicked off a year of special focus on microcredit hoping to make entrepreneurship a reality for as many people around the globe as possible.
"The challenge before us is to address the constraints that exclude people from full participation in the financial sector," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in an opening message.
"Together, we can and we must build inclusive financial sectors that help people improve their lives," Annan said.
Thursday's meeting at UN headquarters in New York featured an emotional speech from Titiek Winarti, a housewife and handicrafts entrepreneur from Indonesia who employs disabled workers.
"I want them to have jobs and I want them to have self-esteem," said Winarti, who got an ovation after explaining how she built up her business after starting with only 50 dollars. "You all give us a chance."
Microcredit got its start in Bangladesh in 1976 by Muhammad Yunus, a professor of rural economics.
The idea is to provide small loans to farmers, would-be entrepreneurs and others who would otherwise have been ineligible for credit from banks using traditional means of evaluating credit-worthiness.
Critics have charged that the programme reaches only a fraction of the world's poorest and fails to address the root causes of poverty but backers say it offers hope for the poor who want to help themselves.
Princess Mathilde of Belgium and Annan's wife Nane were among the dignitaries on hand for the launch of the year-long programme, part of an ambitious UN goal to halve the number of people in extreme poverty by 2015.
"The year is an effort to bring sustained public attention to one of the great success stories of development," said Mark Malloch Brown, head of the UN Development Programme.
"In south Asia and Latin America a dramatic expansion of credit to the poor is taking place. It is creating a revolution at the bottom of society," he said.
"By viewing poor people as vital contributors to their local and national economies the year has the potential to unleash a new wave of microentrepreneurship, giving poor and low-income people a chance to build better lives," said Jose Antonio Ocampo, the UN's undersecretary general of economic and social affairs.
According to a UN press release, the microfinance sector has grown at average rate of between 25 and 30 percent over the past five years.
Repayment rates in countries like Bangladesh, Benin and the Dominican Republic are as high as 97 percent, it said.
11/18/2004 - 20:27 GMT - AFP