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Business |
Small lending talks start today
By FRANK ASAELI
MICROFINANCE
Pasifika Network (MPN) will hold a week-long Pacific
microfinance conference starting today in Port Moresby.
Expected to attend are 100 microfinance and financial sector
practitioners and experts from up to 25 countries.
MPN chairman Luse Kinivuwai describes the network as an alliance
of institutions from around the Pacific with the aim of raising
financial sector issues that are specific to the region.
“The first Pacific microfinance week will be an important
stepping stone in advancing efforts to grow microfinance and
financial services for the poor across the Pacific,” Ms
Kinivuwai said.
The event aims to exchange knowledge and ideas on how to further
promote financial inclusion and increase the outreach of
microfinance across the Pacific region.
And increasing the level of financial inclusion in the Pacific
region would play an important role in bolstering
income-generating activities, creating jobs and reducing
poverty.
Foundation for Development Co-operation (FDC) executive director
Craig Wilson said: “One of the great ways to reduce poverty in
the Pacific is to provide financial services to several million
‘unbanked’ people across the region.”
Issues that will be addressed at the meeting include
highly-dispersed population, lack of transport and
communications infrastructure and the continuing relevance of
the non-monetised subsistence economy in many countries.
Executive director of the Foundation for Development
Co-operation (FDC), Craig Wilson said: “One of the great ways to
reduce poverty in the Pacific is to provide financial services
to the several million ‘unbanked’ people across the region.”
He said the meet would foster cross-fertilisation of ideas on
financial and result in ensuring greater and more coordinated
support from bankers, policy-makers, civil society and
development partners to work hard to grow the breadth and
outreach of financial services available to the Pacific’s poor
and unbanked communities.
It will also provide the opportunity for those organisations
successfully expanding financial sector services in the Pacific
to showcase their achievements.
 
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