Victorine Biy Yongka
4 July 2008
Finance Minister, Essimi Menye, has called on banking institutions to alleviate poverty in the rural areas.
He made the call during a seminar on the theme 'Technology Forum-Access to Finance' which held in Yaounde on June 2.
Speaking at the seminar, the Minister told micro-finance institutions to take the challenge of ensuring that the underprivileged have access to finance. He urged them to ensure that the rural people get mobile phone access so that they can have access to finances.
The Minister, however, expressed the hope that micro finance institutions would take into consideration issues of transparency in business transactions, factors that scare people away from demanding loans.
For her part, the Director of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, CGAP, African representative, Jennifer Isern, told participants that though mobile phone banking is experiencing spectacular growth in some African countries.
According to her,there is the need for a greater number of financial providers to begin using technology to adapt their operations, products and services in Sub-Saharan Africa.
A representative from a banking institution, Lee Tenney, highlighted some constraints micro finance institutions face in reaching the poor. These constraints, according to him, include cost of distribution, credit uncertainty, physical security and transparency. He stated that the poor, most often than not, do not have accounts in banks and therefore cannot use the services of banks.
Delegates at the forum stressed on the importance of strong information systems - the foundation of any financial institution to ease access of the poor to loans. The micro finance delegates said their greatest achievement would be to alleviate poverty in the rural areas through banking technology.
The last forum of technology based on access to finance was held in 2004 and 2006 in Burkina Faso and Senegal respectively. The Yaounde workshop brought together 20 African countries with experts from renowned banking institutions of the world.
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