Islamabad: Mooting the idea of a common passport for South Asian nations, Nobel laureate and pioneer of Bangladesh's micro-credit movement Mohammad Yunus has said such documents would broaden the regional bloc's citizenship.
A SAARC passport facility could initially be extended to businessmen, intellectuals and professionals, allowing them free movement across the region to understand the problems and challenges facing them, Yunus, who is currently on a visit to Pakistan, said on Tuesday.
These passports may be issued to government leaders at a later stage, he said after meeting President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. He appreciated the progress made by Pakistan in the micro-finance sector and said the country had done everything that was needed to be done.
"It is lucky to have an enabling environment and regulatory framework in the micro-finance sector which is at a take off stage," The Dawn quoted him as saying.
Micro-finance was not just about lending money but a tool to unleash the potential and energies of low-income groups. "Micro-finance is the best way of reaching out to the forgotten," Yunus said.
Aziz said the government was making interventions to cause a dent in poverty. As part of its sustainable poverty reduction strategy, the government was focusing on creating income-generating avenues for the poor, specially the womenfolk, through microfinance institutions.
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