Bank director Elizabeth Littlefield rejected Yunus’s criticism, at a microcredit summit in Canada this week, that “not even one percent” of the World Bank’s total lending goes to microcredit funding.
“That actually is quite a narrow definition of the World Bank’s spending in microcredit, it relates only to credit lines on lending to microcredit institutions,” she said.
The actual number “could be up to six percent of its total budget, about 1.3 billion dollars, if you use a much broader definition that includes credit lines, policy advice, payment systems, work on regulation and supervision as well.”
The above paragraph is taken from the CGAP press site and copyrights belong to AFP.
The reason why I am referring to this article is because although I agree with Yunus that the World Bank should do more, it would be so unfair to overlook the non-financial support and gigantic work and efforts of building the infrastructure for the microfinance industry that CGAP has been doing for the past 10 years.
Another press article about Elizabeth Littlefield that came out after the summit is “What is next for microfinance” Very good read.