By Kris Crismundo
MANILA, (PNA) -– The three-day 2013 Partnership against Poverty Summit headed by Microcredit Summit Campaign which aims to reduce poverty through financial inclusion ended at the Philippine International Convention Center Friday.
The Partnership against Poverty Summit gathered around 1,000 delegates from 70 countries to further enable microfinance institutions (MFIs) in helping the poor communities by lending them money to invest for a business.
Experts from the microfinance sector believe that opening the industry to poor communities will enable them to contribute to economic activities, engage in entrepreneurship that will soon create jobs for other poor people, thus reducing severe poverty around the world.
One of the summit speakers, father of Microfinance and 2006 Nobel Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus, reminded stakeholders of the industry that the microfinance sector shall focus on helping poor communities and not in gaining profit from money borrowed by clients.
Yunus, also the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh that helped to alleviate the situation of the poor people there, reiterated that awareness of poor communities in microfinance is critical to end poverty as they will know that there are institutions willing to lend them money and train them to make money.
Hence, partnership among government, business, finance and civil society is needed to expand awareness particularly to the poorest areas around the globe.
The Indonesian Minister of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Businesses Syariefuddin Hassan and Alliance for Financial Inclusion Strategy and Network Development Director Sung-Ah Lee were also pushing that creating policies to strengthen the microfinance industry will allow MFIs to penetrate more poor communities.
These laws will also promote competency, protection and confidence among stakeholders.
Moreover, the Microcredit Summit Campaign has chosen to conduct the Partnerships against Poverty Summit in Philippines as the body recognized the country’s effort for inclusive growth.
To show the national government’s support for the summit, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) governor Amado Tetangco, Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad, and Social Welfare and Development Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman presented the actions of the administration in reducing severe poverty in the country.
Poverty reduction is one of the Millennium Development Goals in 2015 which is set by the World Bank.