November 26, 2019: United Nations Secretary General's Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development Queen Maxima of the Netherlands on Tuesday said financial inclusion was pivotal to development of Pakistan which would create more opportunities for people.
She said women and poor segment of Pakistan had great potential to reap the benefits of financial inclusion and digitization in the country.
“There is a great potential for rapid change in the financial inclusion particularly for women and the poor people of Pakistan,” she said while addressing a forum here.
The two-day Pakistan Innovative Finance Forum was jointly organized by KARANDAAZ and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in collaboration with local partners.
She informed that a 2017 survey showed that Pakistan had made a remarkable improvement as its financial inclusion had expanded from 13% in 2014 to 21% in 2017.
Queen Maxima pointed out that the UN administration had welcomed the Pakistan government's efforts of expanding financial inclusion.
She also termed the Pakistan government's efforts in formulating a revised policy to achieve the financial inclusion goals by 2023 as welcome measures.
She said in new policy, the government was setting targets of 65 million active digital accounts including 20 million accounts for women.
She added that partnership between fast moving good companies and financial service providers would help digitizing supply value chain and would be helpful for every body in Pakistan.
Later, Queen Maxima also witnessed a signing ceremony along with Minister for Economic Affairs Hammad Azhar, Governor State Bank of Pakistan Raza Baqir, Syed Ali Mahmood from Pakistan Bill Melinda Gates Foundation and representative from the British aid agency DFID.
The agreement on Micro Payment gateway was signed between SBP and KARANDAAZ and was signed by Chief Executive of KARANDAAZ Ali Sarfaraz and Sohail Javed from the SBP.
According to the agreement, the new system to be formed by KARANDAAZ and the SBP would help resolving the complexities of financial transfers and reducing time and cost of cash transfers.
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