“Regional Workshop China” in Beijing, organized by the World Microfinance Forum Geneva (WMFG)
Focus on coming regulatory framework and constraints in rural areas at the “Regional Workshop China” in Beijing, organized by the World Microfinance Forum Geneva (WMFG)
February 28th, 2008
One of the keywords heard on the Regional Workshop China organized by WMFG, was the word “trust”. On one side there should be trust granted by the peasants who will borrow the money, to the microfinance institutions who lent the money on the other side. Especially with new technologies that 51give is introducing, trust is also a very important issue. A trust, which can only exist, if a right regulatory framework is provided for the correct implementation of microfinance in China. A reserved promise for this was made by the People’s Bank of China (POBC) at the end of the day.
The morning program had interesting speakers from UNDP, China Agriculture University and the Rural Development Institute of CASS (Prof. Du Xiaoshan). The attendance of Prof. Du made the discussion very lively and focused a lot on the existing problems on providing microfinance solutions in the rural sectors (time consuming, accessibility, practical problems that occur for simple financial transactions). The story of SDR Consulting, followed upon this by explaining the upcoming possibilities in microfinance by the use of new technologies as mobile networks.
As 51give always emphasizes mobile networks should be more explored; as according to market research 50 percent of the peasants in rural areas already have a mobile phone. Mobile phones can be used to make communications to remote areas easier, but can also be used for mobile payments and in the near future even cash transactions. An area which 51give supports in the future by providing their internet and mobile platform for microfinance (for more information look at www.51give.com). One of the existing problems with mobile payments is off course that there should always be a unique identification of the client. Which is quite hard with all the prepaid phones going around. Off course there are already some solutions available for these practical problems.
A very detailed contribution to the workshop came from Mr. Bold Magvan from XacBank Mongolia about this subject. He told that they already did a project in Mongolia in which they used mobile phones to make transactions so peasants could do there repayments by mobile phone through a network of agents. This makes it possible that farmers for example do not have to travel for two days to make repayments. Off course mobiles phones also offer the possibility to function as informationportals. For example the service that Cellbazaar is providing can be extended to use for more microfinance purposes; let’s say the availability of all kinds of agricultural information about the region.
The overall feeling amongst the participants of the workshop was that, due to the efforts made in the last two to three years, now everything will fall into place very quickly; ‘ We are almost there … ’ as GTZ mentioned. The wishes about the new regulatory framework, necessary for providing the right settings for enabling microfinance in China, are clear and on their way and with the new coming technologies available we just have to do it. That means a new interesting year for microfinance has started.
At the end of May of this year there will also be a new interesting conference held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the 11th Conference of Microfinance Institutions organized by the Microfinance Centre. For more information about 51give, please look at www.51give.com.
This is the forum website for World Microfinance Forum Geneva http://microfinanceforum.org/