Financial Inclusion: A New Microfinance Initiative for APEC
This paper suggests ways for APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) to steer Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation's (APEC's) exploration of microfinance and to get microfinance onto the agenda of the Finance Ministers' Process (FMP). It recommends that ABAC should adopt the related concepts of financial inclusion and exclusion as a framework for analysis and action. The paper states that a new initiative is necessary to revive APEC's exploration of microfinance. Such an initiative would:
- Focus less on problems of poverty and gender and more on issues of financial exclusion;
- Set the discussion in a context of financial inclusion;
- Focus attention on the systemic problem of exclusion, rather than on the policy tool of microfinance;
- Emphasize goals rather than instruments;
- Persuade finance ministers to take up financial inclusion as a policy goal integral to their agenda of financial system development and capacity building.
The paper discusses possible modalities for an FMP initiative to increase levels of financial inclusion in member economies, with microfinance as the principal policy tool. It also considers where ABAC might find allies to support such an initiative. These include commercial banks and international financial institutions.
