Reserve Bank of Fiji pushing microfinance agenda insistently

Microfinance Focus, July 27, 2010: Speaking at the RBF’s Hibiscus Queen Contestant, Governor of the Reserve Bank Fiji (RBF), Mr. Sada Reddy reiterated RBF`s ongoing commitment towards making a favorable ground for development of microfinance in Fiji, he said “the first thing we have done is to form a national taskforce which has got a number of various people involved in the microfinance and the finance industry which this committee is driving.”

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“Today’s,  function marks awareness and we are working with commercial banks as you know last year, the RBF  issued a directive that each bank has to setup microfinance unit and I am pleased to say all banks have now setup microfinance  in their branches and number of them have taken additional activities in their banks”, he said.

The National Financial Inclusion Taskforce (NEFT), which is chaired by RBF Governor Mr. Sada Reddy, has 3 working groups – Financial Literacy, Microfinance and Statistics. The goal of NEFT is to reach 150,000 unbanked clients by 2014 through a nationally coordinated effort, supported by a variety of financial service providers, offering a broad range of relevant, accessible, affordable and cost effective financial services. The task force second met held recently in Ba Town on 25 June, 2010. The working groups presented their reports and recommendations for the way forward to the Taskforce, Microfinance working group presented following recommendations:-

• Incentives – research global best practices and look at incentives to facilitate financial inclusion for NFIT endorsement;
• Information Sharing – Google group email network and the Publication of regular NFIT Newsletter

Recently, RBF partnered with the Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme (PFIP), to extend financial services and financial literacy to rural and low income people around Fiji. According to a report commissioned by Asian Development, suggest that there is lack of reporting format for microfinance, which means financial transparency is very low. RBF and PFIP collaborated to provide financial reporting training to 35 people here in Fiji at the beginning of this month. This is an important step to building the local capacity here now, to ensure that microfinance initiatives in the future are both stable and sustainable, according to an statement made by RBF`s Governor.

Further, the NFIT working group on financial literacy has designed a strategy and started implementation of financial literacy into the national curriculum in Fiji. The literacy campaign aims to stimulate basic understanding of money management among children.

Significant progress has also been made to push mobile banking agenda in the country. Shortly after the RBF’s e-money launch, Vodafone officially launched its M-Paisa product, and since then, Digicel has also made public that it will soon offer its Mobile Money product here in Fiji.

“The ability to provide financial services over these mobile networks now allows us to access rural and low income people that were previously too remote, or too expensive to reach. M-Paisa already has thousands of customers, and is growing exponentially every day”, Said Mr. Reddy.

“As this access continues to improve, we shift our focus to the types of financial products that can be offered on these platforms. The NFIT goal was written with forethought to promote a “broad range” of services as international experience has clearly shown that microfinance products beyond savings and credit yield significant benefits to those struggling to overcome poverty, he added further ”.

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