‘A farmer can be an entrepreneur with access to credit’

Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus yesterday said credit is a human right as it relates to the livelihood of people.

“You can not establish the right of livelihood without ensuring the right to credit,” said the chief adviser.

He made the comments while speaking to a side event at the COP29 in Azerbaijan capital Baku.

Bangladesh and the Netherlands jointly hosted the event titled A Global Conversation: Access to Finance for Small Scale Farmers at the Bangladesh Pavilion of the conference.

Additional Foreign Secretary Riaz Hamidullah moderated the event, which was also attended by Dutch Prince Jaime Bernardo of Bourbon-Parma, also the climate envoy of the Netherlands.

The Dutch prince highlighted how credit, insurance, investment, research, and finance increased agricultural output while insisting that millions of farmers across the globe now needed this support.

Speaking at the event, Yvonne Pinto, the director general of the International Rice Research Institute, said that rice production grew globally ever since credit was made accessible to farmers.

Jorim Schraven, a director of the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank FMO, hailed Professor Yunus for the moral support he extended on debt rights, adding it was related to people’s rights to know.

Farhana Haque Rahman, senior vice president of Inter Press Service and Executive Director IPS Noram, said that currently, 550 million small household farmers feed two billion people around the world.

Professor Yuunus said a farmer can be an entrepreneur if he or she is given access to credit.

“Every business needs money and investment,” he said, adding that a farmer not only grows crops but also sells them to market.

If he was given access to credit, he could buy crops from other farmers and sell them to improve his life, said Professor Yunus, who is hailed globally as a microcredit pioneer.

The chief adviser said countries should redesign the banking system by following the Grameen Bank model to make credit accessible to farmers, a considerable number of whom are women.

“Every country should have a social business banking law,” he said, while appreciating that currently at least 110 universities across the globe are teaching social business as a course.