By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, October 2
-- Amid the Kenya report released under embargo today by the International Monetary Fund is a review of financial inclusion and technology:
"Financial
inclusion continues progressing with mobile-banking loans and deposits
driven by M-Shwari (7 million customers in its first year of operations)
and higher SME access to credit.
"M-Pesa
was introduced in 2007 as a means to transfer money via mobile phones.
M-Pesa users deposit money into a 'cell phone account,' and use SMS
technology for transfers and 'on demand' payments. Thanks to its use of
low-cost technology, overall transaction costs have declined as bills
can be paid remotely. Even more importantly, the poor have benefited the
most: M-Pesa reaches 84 percent of population earning less than US$2 a
day. M-Shwari, a deposit-lending facility tailored to the poor, has 7
million active customers in over a year of operations. Kenyan farmers
benefit from schemes to acquire equipment, like water pumps, with
repayments being made through M-Pesa; M-Kopa allows the use of solar
panels in areas not served by the power grid, with repayments in small
installments."
Whether in other contexts the IMF is promoting financial inclusion is
another question. But there is much to be learned from Kenya - including
for lower income parts of the ostensibly developed world. We'll have more on this.
On October 1 at the UN, Inner City Press and the Free UN Coalition for Access pushed for and reported on a briefing about African Regional Economic Communities, here.
Back on September 25, with Ghana
hosting an
International
Monetary
Fund visit,
Inner City
Press asked
IMF
Spokesperson
Gerry Rice about what
Ghana’s
President
John Mahama
said this week
at the New
York Stock
Exchange: "It
is my hope
that by
January we
should start a
three-year IMF
program
to try and
stabilize the
macroeconomic
environment.”
Rice
took the
question from
Inner City
Press and said
"I can tell you we currently have an IMF team in Accra to initiate
discussions on a program. We will have a press release at the end of
that mission. The context is, indeed, that the Ghana authorities
initiated discussion on an economic program that could be supported by
the Fund. Those are the discussions that are then taking place. So it's
premature to have dates and more details on that process because the
team is in Ghana. We’re expecting it to conclude this week, and we will
communicate at the right time."
Then this, concluding that "discussions on a possible program that could be supported by the IMF will continue in Washington during the Annual Meetings."
Inner
City Press
also submitted
this question on September 25:
“Ukraine PM
Yatseniuk
yesterday
said, 'We do
understand
that we have
to readjust
the
program.
Because when
we started the
program with
the IMF, it
was a
peace program.
For today,
this is a
wartime
government and
a wartime
program.' What
is the IMF's
response to /
comment on
this?”
While
Rice said that
there was no
request for
any
“readjustment”
yet,
that the IMF
will combine
two reviews in
November with
an eye toward
its Executive
Board meeting
on Ukraine at
the end of the
year or
early 2015. He
said the
purpose of
such reviews,
generally, is
readjustment.
But
Rice did in
this answer
address the
appropriateness
of IMF lending
into what
Yatseniuk called
“a wartime
government and
a wartime
program"
speaking at
the Council on
Foreign Relations
in New York.
We'll have
more on this as well.
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