11/15/2013 - 4:20pm
Leaders of the G20 welcomed progress made by the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) on advancing financial inclusion. In their declaration released at the end of the Summit in St. Petersburg on September 6, 2013, the G20 Leaders endorsed the following recommendations of the GPFI Report and committed to continue these efforts under the Australian G20 Presidency:
"- to analyse the work which already has been done and develop further priorities for 2014 and beyond with an updated Financial Inclusion Action Plan which sets the stage in particular to: increase private sector involvement; harness innovative mechanisms such as mobile instruments and technology, especially in remittances area; identify how to tackle the bottleneck in uptake by increasing incentives to the poor to take up financial services and to improve financial literacy and financial consumer protection of the vulnerable groups such as women, migrants and youth.
- to call upon relevant SSBs: (i) to continue their progress to integrate consideration of financial inclusion in their work, consistent with their respective mandates; (ii) participate in relevant activities of the GPFI and engage GPFI representation in relevant activities of the SSBs; and (iii) give attention to emerging issues in financial inclusion of relevance to multiple SSBs.
- as the SME finance gap in the global economy remains large, to call upon the IFI/DFIs to further support country efforts and find innovative approaches and tools to address the SMEs finance challenges and constraints, and to call upon governments to continue especially to strengthen the financial markets infrastructure to lower costs of serving SMEs responsibly.
- to call upon relevant government agencies and development partners to assess the current state of the financial inclusion in countries in order to sustainably improve the situation and to monitor the effects of the policy interventions, particularly using the G20 Set of the Financial Inclusion Indicators."
The G20 Leaders specifically welcomed the integration of consumer empowerment and protection through the establishment of the GPFI Subgroup on Financial Consumer Protection and Financial Literacy. The G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators, developed by the GPFI to enable more informed financial inclusion target-setting and monitoring, were also endorsed by the leaders in the declaration.
The declaration also highlighted progress at the country level to address challenges in SME financing and the G20 Leaders called on the International Financial Institutions and Development Finance Institutions to further improve financial market infrastructure and support the development of innovative tools to address financing challenges and constraints faced by SMEs.
The full declaration is available here.
