Grameen Bank was ranked 12th on Fortune’s inaugural “Change the World List” in recognition of its contribution to creating economic opportunities for those in poverty and bringing unbanked people under financial services.
This adds to the list of feats achieved by Grameen Bank Founder Muhammad Yunus who set up the microfinance institution in 1983 out of belief that small, collateral-free loans could enable Bangladesh’s unbanked poor to start businesses and lift themselves out of poverty.
Grameen Bank proved the Nobel laureate right, demonstrating that microcredit could be self-sustaining and even profitable, said the US-based magazine on its website as it released the list on Friday.
Since the inception more than three decades ago, the microcredit organisation has lent $17.4 billion to 8.7 million borrowers, most of them impoverished women. Its model has been copied around the world, including in the US.
According to the World Bank, globally, microfinance accounts for at least $60 billion in loans annually and has reached 135 million people.
Change the World list is a ranking of 51 companies “that have made significant progress in addressing major social problems as a part of their core business strategy,” the magazine says.
It ranked companies not by the dollars they make, but the good deeds they are doing.
Danone, one of the social business partners of Grameen, was ranked 14th for offering products that address poor nutrition.
Grameen and Danone Group have formed a joint venture in 2005 to produce yogurt fortified with micro-nutrients to decrease malnutrition of the children of Bangladesh.
UK-based telecom Vodafone and Kenya-based Safaricom topped the list jointly while Google, Toyota, Walmart, Enel, GSK, Jain Irrigation Systems, Cisco, Novartis and Facebook completed the top ten in the descending order.
Source: The Daily Star