ID requirements for SME accounts absurd

COMMERCIAL banks have tightened their identification requirement for opening new small to medium enterprise (SME) accounts.
That makes it impossible for many uneducated local farmers and entrepreneurs from remote parts of the country to access essential SME banking services.
Many rural farmers trying to open up SME accounts have unfortunately been turned away because they did not have valid ID required by the banks.
The banks’ ID requirements does not seem applicable to an uneducated rural farmer or a small-scale gold buyer from a remote local level government area.
How do you expect an uneducated entrepreneur or a farmer from the remote village to possess a driver’s license, passport, work permit, employment ID, student ID, birth certificate, employment letter, school certificate or marriage certificate in order to open up SME bank account for his small business?
This is absurd.
The national identification (NID) card rollout programme in remote LLGs have been slow.
Instead of boosting the economy by relaxing certain bank regulations to suit rural farmers and entrepreneurs achieve their business goals through SME, the Bank of PNG, as a regulator, and other commercial banks, have imposed logically contradictory measures that impedes the growth of the country’s economy.

DN Simeno,
Lae