‘Financial success comes with challenges’

FINANCIAL inclusion is like a journey with road signs pointing to challenges and opportunities ahead, according to Central Bank of Solomon Islands governor Denton Rarawa.
Rarawa was one of the five panellists who discussed the positive impacts of financial inclusion during a summit in Port Moresby on Monday.
“In Solomon Islands, we are now under the second financial inclusion strategy 2016-2020,” Rarawa said.
“We are trying to measure the impact of financial inclusion which is in working progress by coming up with a financial inclusion index that measure various variables like growth, financial stability women empowerment and all other areas.”
Other panellists included PNG Microfinance client Cathy Rumints, MIX Asia and the Pacific region manager Sachin Hirani, South Pacific Business Development chief operating officer Polly Kelekis and Australia department of Foreign Affairs and Trade senior programme manager Marina Illingworth.
Rumints said financial inclusion had brought a lot of change to her people especially in their living standards.
“There is still a lot of work to do that requires the cooperation of the government, private sector, non-government organisations and people to make sure the 80 per cent of unbanked people get services,” she said.
Hirani said what the impact meant for them was 100 per cent financial inclusion as they did not have their own statements and would want to work with policy makers.
Kelekis said they looked at the number of loans they had dispersed and the value of those loans in the countries that they operated in.