Satellite Seminar on Financial Inclusion
held in conjunction with the 61st World Statistics Congress
Opening remarks by Mr. Abdellatif JOUAHRI
Governor of Bank Al-Maghrib
Marrakech, July 14, 2017
"While data is important, the right data is essential"
Albert Einstein
Honorable Chair of the Irving Fisher Committee,
Honorable Governor of the BEAC,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to Morocco on the occasion
of this international seminar on financial inclusion, which will focus on
data and their important role in developing policies and strategies that
take into account on-the-ground realities and then measuring and
assessing the impact of these policies.
First of all, I would like to thank our partners, the Irving Fisher Committee
on Central Bank Statistics and the Center for Latin American Monetary
Studies for their valuable contribution to the organization of this event,
held as usual on the sidelines of the 61st World Statistics Congress.
The topic of our meeting further underscores the importance that central
banks and international standardization bodies attach to financial
inclusion. It is a subject that is of increasing interest to them, particularly
with regard to its interactions with financial stability, resulting in hindering
the policies put in place to develop access to and use of financial
services.
A sustainable and efficient financial inclusion requires a long-lasting
balance between innovation and the safeguards that need to be
developed in order to ensure the soundness of the financial sector.
Ladies and gentlemen,
As you know, financial inclusion has become an important factor in
economic efficiency and social equity, and international organizations
have, for nearly a decade, underlined its importance and the need for
public authorities to adopt national strategies for financial inclusion.
The World Bank considers financial inclusion as a key factor for poverty
alleviation and has set itself the goal of achieving universal access to
financial services by 2020. Under this framework, it targets 25 priority
countries, including Morocco.
To this end, it launched in 2012 the Financial Inclusion Support
Framework (FISF), aligned with the Maya Declaration, to support the
implementation of country commitments.
For its part, the G20 has made financial inclusion one of its working
themes, and in 2009 established an expert group who drew up the nine
Core Principles for Innovative Financial Inclusion. In 2010, the G20
launched the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion, including all G20
countries and interested non-G20 countries. This partnership helps
strengthen coordination and collaboration between the various national
and international stakeholders through its three key Implementing
Partners: the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), the Consultative
Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), and the International Finance
Corporation (IFC).
Certainly, all these organizations, to name but a few, and policy-makers
are aware of the increasingly critical role of data and its impact on the
efficiency of the decision-making process, from the design phase to
monitoring and evaluation.
The use of rigorous, objective and reliable data helps to accurately
assess the state of financial inclusion, set realistic goals, identify
obstacles, design relevant policies and monitor and assess the impact.
Based on this premise, several international initiatives have been
launched to contribute to the development of standard indicators and
study tools in order to better understand the components of financial
inclusion and better analyze their impact on financial stability and
integrity as well as on economic development and the population's
wellbeing.
It is within this framework that the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund have developed surveys specifically designed to assess
financial inclusion from the "supply" and "demand" side.
The Global Findex is currently the most comprehensive global database
to assess the financial behavior of individuals by analyzing the use of
financial services in nearly 140 countries.
The IMF's Financial Access Survey, conducted annually since 2009, is
another important source of data on financial inclusion. It provides an
overview of the availability and use of financial services by individuals
and firms by collecting appropriate information from various providers of
financial services.
Data collected through these surveys have enabled policymakers in
several countries to benefit from the opportunities identified to further
promote financial inclusion. They also provide analysts with a reliable
basis for understanding the causal links between financial inclusion and
financial stability, on the one hand, and between inequality and economic
growth, on the other.
In addition to surveys, international organizations have mobilized to
develop a range of indicators to assess the different dimensions of
financial inclusion.
Since the Cannes Summit in 2011, the G20 has focused on developing
financial inclusion indicators, including indicators on access to and use of
financial services, financial literacy, and the quality of financial service
provisioning and consumption, as part of a continuous reflection process
integrating new international trends in this field, notably the development
of new distribution models and the emergence of digital financial
services.
The AFI also published a set of basic indicators on access to and use of
financial services in 2013 and on quality in 2016 with the aim of
harmonizing data among its members by providing them with a common
tool to ensure comparability and foster peer learning.
Ladies and gentlemen,
In Morocco, since 2007 both the Ministry of Finance and Bank
AlMaghrib have considered financial inclusion as a major instrument to
develop a comprehensive strategy of the financial sector by 2020 which
aims to deepen the national banking market, develop capital markets
and position our country as a regional financial hub.
Through our commitment to the Maya Declaration in 2013, we
announced our pledge to promote access to and use of quality financial
services based on sound and solid foundations. That same pledge was
reaffirmed in 2016 as part of the roadmap of aligning the Moroccan
financial sector to sustainable development goals at the COP 22 held
last year in Marrakech.
This commitment reflects our willingness and determination to continue
our financial inclusion efforts, which have enabled Morocco to become a
regional benchmark, given the significant progress it has achieved in this
regard. Such efforts have been reported by the World Bank and the IMF
during their last Financial Sector Assessment Mission (FSAP) conducted
in 2015.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Aware of the importance of data for designing relevant policies, Bank
AlMaghrib has taken specific measures to develop, in line with international
standards, a set of indicators which address two fundamental
dimensions of financial inclusion: access to and use of financial services.
As for the "quality" dimension, it is monitored for the time being through
the Banking Services Price Index, which we developed in 2011 and
which accurately reflects the cost and trend of banking services.
Moreover, considering the weight of very small, small and medium
enterprises (VSMEs) in our industrial fabric and their role in employment
and wealth creation, we mobilized various public and private actors to
establish an observatory for VSMEs. Founded in 2016, this observatory
aims at (1) centralizing national and regional data and information on
VSMEs, and (2) generating demographic, economic and financial
information on economic sectors in order to allow stakeholders to
respond more effectively to the issue of financing this specific category of
companies.
We have also established two credit bureaus, the first in 2007 and the
second in 2016, in order to provide credit institutions and similar bodies
with a common platform for the exchange of data. The objective of this
platform is to help these institutions better assess the risks incurred on
their counterparties, through solvency reports specifying the
commitments of their customers and their payment behaviors. It also
allows Bank Al-Maghrib to measure the use of loans by the population
and to evaluate the impact of actions taken on the supply and demand
side.
And in 2013 we launched, jointly with the World Bank, a survey on
Moroccan households' perception of financial services. This survey
helped us identify the barriers hindering the development of financial
inclusion and allowed us to better prepare our first national financial
education strategy.
A second survey called "Global FINDEX" will be conducted shortly and
will serve as a basic diagnosis to define our national financial inclusion
strategy.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The data collected over the past few years show the real progress made
and the challenges ahead: disparities between regions, rural and urban
areas, gender, data quality improvement and the development of an
effective tool to measure impact.
These challenges emphasize the need to continue our joint efforts, both
nationally and internationally, and to get mobilized, in an overall and
harmonized manner, to develop financial inclusion of the population
across all segments.
Data reliability is not an issue specific to Bank Al-Maghrib. This was
evidenced by the last report of the Irving Fisher Committee on "Measures
of Financial Inclusion - Central Bank Perspectives", prepared on the
basis of a survey carried out during the 4th quarter of 2015 in 47
countries.
The findings and recommendations of this report, which will be debated
at length today, reveal that it is of paramount importance to improve data
in a much more concerted and shared framework for a better
international coordination.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Our one-day high-level meeting will cover a number of themes that are
challenging to all of us: Is financial inclusion a challenge for national
financial stability? How does it affect monetary policy transmission?
What measure should central banks take to safeguard the objectives of
financial stability and monetary stability while improving access to
financial markets?
I remain convinced that making this gathering an annual tradition will
enable us to provide the most appropriate responses to meet these
challenges.
I wish full success to this seminar and wish you a pleasant stay in
Morocco.