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Muhammad Yunus
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Poor Always Pay Back
Central assumption underlying GGS still remains the same as it was behind GCS - the firm belief that the poor people always pay back their loans. On some occasions they may take longer time to pay back than it was originally stipulated, but repay they will. There is no reason for a credit institution dedicated to provide financial services to the poor to get uptight because a borrower could not pay back the entire amount of a loan on a date fixed at the beginning of the disbursement of the loan. Many things can go wrong for a poor person during the loan period. After all, the circumstances are beyond the control of the poor people. We see no reason why the sky should fall on anybody's head because a borrower took longer time to pay back her loan. Since she is paying additional interest for the extra time, where is the problem? We always advocated that microcredit programs should not fall into the logical trap of the conventional banking and start looking at their borrowers as some kind of "time-bombs" who are ticking away and waiting to create big trouble on pre-fixed dates. Please rest assured that the poor people are not going to create any trouble. It is us, the designers of institutions and rules, who keep creating trouble for them. One can benefit enormously by having trust in them, admiring their struggle for and commitment to have decent lives for themselves. It is very easy to appreciate the architecture of GGS if one keeps in mind this central assumption behind the system.
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