Tokyo – Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus said Thursday that microfinance could help disaster-struck Japan rebuild, even though the concept he pioneered is usually associated with poor and developing nations.
Yunus – the founder of Grameen Bank, which had been credited with lifting millions of people out of poverty by extending loans to rural families to start small businesses – is a seen as one of the world’s leading anti-poverty activists, and said that extending microloans could help people in regions devastated by last year’s earthquake and tsunami disaster.
“It’s needed everywhere – it doesn’t matter where you are,” Yunus told the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.
Approximately 19,000 died or remain missing following the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Japan’s northeastern coast, triggering a giant tsunami on March 11 last year. Many were forced to evacuate the area, leaving them with no jobs or homes.
“You used to have a job. Now you have no job because of the disaster. Can I create my own job? Self-employment,” Yunus said, citing the benefits of small microfinance loans.
Rebuilding efforts remain largely ineffective. The Japanese government had pledged a reconstruction budget of 15 trillion yen (US $190 billion), but only 40% of that money had been used. A large portion was set aside to repair roads and bridges, but the municipalities responsible for such infrastructure projects lacked the manpower, time, and expertise to come up with blueprints.
“We could not spend the money because municipalities were unable to come up with reconstruction plans,” an official at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism told The Asahi Shimbun.
Only 400 million of the 111.6 billion yen allocated for public housing for those who lost their homes or were forced to evacuate were used, with no prospects of future public housing construction. Officials said the remaining 111.2 billion yen will be returned to the national treasury.
Photo from the Grameen Creative Lab.