Critiques of Microcredit

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Microcredit Movement: The Downside

The microcredit movement has been successful in reaching out loans to millions of poor people worldwide and directly helping in the alleviation of poverty to some extent. According to Newsweek, April 9, 2007 issue article titled "The microcredit backlash," so far about 500 million poor worldwide have reportedly benefitted form some $6 billion in microloans and is expected by aficionados to increase up to $300 billions. The United Nations declared the year 2005 as the year of microcredit and last year Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank received the Nobel Peace prize. Yunus predicts that " one day, our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like."

However, as some critics have observed, microcredit is far from being a succesful antidote to eradicate world poverty.