Micro-Businesses Booming

This report, written by Naveed Ahmed and dated December 7th, comes from the Pakistani-based news website The News.

The Microcredit Summit Campaign, which promotes efforts for the Third World poor to start their own businesses, reports that as many as a hundred million people will be using micro-credit resources to become small-scale entrepreneurs.

Micro-loans are used to start many low-tech businesses. In Pakistan alone, as Mr. Ahmed reports, over 670,000 loans have been made to nearly 23,000 villiages in that nation. Roughly four out of ten loans go to women.

This is heartening news. Distributism believes in promoting small businesses and co-operatives over big business, and the local economy over the global economy. These micro-loan efforts in the Third World will help to increase their overall economic health by reducing unemployment and encouraging home production and commerce. This will, in turn, contribute to reducing social tensions that lead to untold misery.

It is not a panacea for Third World ills by any means. But the micro-credit movement helps to alleviate them. Congratulations to those in this movement.