‘SBP committed to fostering microfinance sector’

Sector bigwigs share doubts and uncertainties at conference

ISLAMABAD: State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Deputy Governor Saeed Ahmed has said that the central bank is committed to creating a favorable regulatory environment for the microfinance sector while providing cheap financial resources and building infrastructure to reduce the cost of delivery of funds.

He said this at the inaugural session of the 10th Microfinance Country Forum 2016 held at the Marriott Hotel. The one-day event was organised by Shamrock Conferences International in collaboration with BRAC Pakistan, Mobilink Microfinance Bank and Khushhali Microfinance Bank.



“SBP is pursuing a three-pronged strategy to achieve the goal of 50% financial inclusion by the year 2020. Twenty million households need microfinance in Pakistan. So far we have achieved access to 4.3 million borrowers, so we still have a long way to go to reach the target of 50% financial-inclusion by 2020,” he said.

DAMEN Support Program CEO Naghma Rashid stressed that there is over emphasis on numbers.

“Instead of going for numbers, we should emphasise on having a conducive environment. We need to see if big outreach numbers of other countries have helped them reduced poverty or not,” she added. Rashid said the growth of microeconomic institutions has suffered due to poor macroeconomic situations in the country.

“How could you lend money to the manufacturing sector when there is acute electricity shortage in the country?” She asked.

BRAC Pakistan Country Representative and CEO Sher Zaman said that there is a need of community mobilisation in rural areas of the country.

“Unless we work on community mobilisation in rural areas, we cannot achieve our target to reach 10 million borrowers by 2020,” he stressed.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 5^th, 2016.

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