Microcredit

A Dhaka court on Wednesday indicted Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and 13 others for embezzling more than USD two million from the dividends of the employees of a telecom company. Judge Syed Arafat Hossain of Dhaka Special Judge Court 4 rejected a plea for the dismissal of charges by the accused and ordered the indictment. Judge Hossain read out the charges as Dr Yunus and the co-accused were on the dock and fixed the date for starting the trial hearing on July 15, a prosecution lawyer said. Counsels for Yunus, 83, and the 13 others accused all currently on bail pleaded not guilty and demanded exemption of the clients but the court rejected the plea saying the charges brought against the accused were primarily proved and thus, charges were framed against them. Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for pioneering microcredit to help impoverished people, especially women, while the Grameen Bank, which he had founded, also secured the prize on the same occasion.

Yunus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2006 for pioneering the use of microcredit and lifting millions out of poverty

The overall assets under management stood at Rs 8,511 crore as of March 31, 2023, against Rs 6,581 crore in the year-ago period

Ghosh says bank is looking to increase branch count to 8,000 nationally from the current 5,640

The Reserve Bank of India's recently released guidelines for app-based loans show a clear desire to rein in the industry after its pandemic-era excesses

When the private lender started operations in August 2016, microcredit constituted 85 per cent of its total loan portfolio

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of the MIT, and Micheal Kremer of Harvard University, have been awarded for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty

According RBI data, at the end of May, 2018, the loan outstanding in microcredit segment was close to Rs 197 bn, against Rs 142 bn in May, 2017, representing a growth of about 38%