Yunus wants Japan's 'social business'

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus on Tuesday urged the government and private companies to do more "social business" to better help the poor.

Winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Price for his efforts to eradicate poverty, Yunus told a Tokyo news conference that official development assistance is "a very restricted framework" because it is basically a government-to-government relationship.

"Development is a much wider issue than government to government. That should be government to the people of the country," the 67-year-old Bangladeshi economist said.

Social business is to "do good to other people," rather than to maximize profits, he said.

Yunus and his Grameen Bank, founded in 1983, were awarded the Nobel last year for a program offering micro-credit, or small-lot, collateral-free loans, to poor people. Many borrowers use the loans to start small businesses and secure other sources of income and escape poverty.

There are more than 7 million borrowers in Bangladesh, 97 percent of whom are women, and the practice has been adopted in more than 60 countries, according to Yunus.

He said social business enterprises make "no losses and no dividends" and strive to address problems such as poverty, disease, environmental degradation and child malnutrition.

"I hope Japanese people will be interested in creating social businesses . . . and show leadership to the world," he said.

Citing French food giant Group Danone SA, which has teamed up with the Grameen Bank to provide dairy products to low-income people, Yunus said, "What about Toyota, Panasonic social business?"

He said ODA money should also be put into social businesses.

Just as the Grameen Bank is owned by its borrowers, a system should be created to involve local people in managing infrastructure, he said.

"ODA goes to a country to build a bridge. When the bridge is done, it is passed on to the government and it's always a government property," Yunus said. "This bridge should be owned by local poor people. You link them up."

Earlier in the day, Yunus met with Foreign Minister Taro Aso and they spoke about African development. The Foreign Ministry said Yunus explained to Aso the role of micro-credit in reducing poverty there.