Maiava Atalina Ainuu Enari: Educating individuals to manage their
personal finances
Opening remarks by Ms Maiava Atalina Ainuu Enari, Governor of the Central Bank of
Samoa, at the MoneyPACIFIC "Money Guide" launch, Apia, 2 April 2014.
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Members of the Diplomatic Community
Youth and Education Directors of the Church denominations present today
Our MoneyPACIFIC partners - Kim Hailwood and Becky de Beer-Lamont
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is indeed an honour for me to address this gathering today, at this important milestone in
the partnership of the MoneyPACIFIC project and the Central Bank of Samoa.
The MoneyPACIFIC Project was established in 2007 under the umbrella of the NZ-Pacific
Remittances' Project which stands to help reduce costs of sending money within the Pacific
Region, and has concurrently worked hard to lift Pacific Communities awareness of the need
to prudently manage their personal finances. We have worked closely with the
MoneyPACIFIC programme over the recent years and we consider them a great ally in the
promotion of financial inclusion and financial literacy here in Samoa.
In a moment Kim and Becky will elaborate more on the MoneyPACIFIC initiative and its
latest resource but before that I would like to take a few moments to talk a little bit more on
why financial literacy is important to the Central Bank of Samoa.
"Financial literacy" or "the set of skills and knowledge that allows an individual to make
informed and effective decisions with all of their financial resources" is an important life-skill
in our diverse capacities as students, employees, consumers, savers and investors etc. By
now you may wonder as to why how you manage your personal finances is of any interest to
the Bank? You may wonder as to why the Bank should care on how best you can manage
your personal finances?
The answer is simply this - We believe that economic development can be fostered by
educating individuals on how best to manage their personal finances. We don't have to
rely on the big businesses or other forces for this - each and every one of us has the
potential to foster economic development.
Therefore we stand before you today not as leaders or dictators of your wallets and purses,
but as counterparts on a way to forward our future financial prospects. And so it gives me
great pleasure to introduce to you a tool designed to help you take charge of your personal
finances and take you closer to realizing your full potential as agents of economic
development - the MoneyPACIFIC Money Guide
The Guide is simple enough for EVERYONE to understand. It is featured in, Samoan,
Tongan and English and with this in mind, Samoa has accepted the privilege to be the
imperative starting point for launching this project.
This Guide was by you and for you. It was compiled using your perspective as a school
student, as an elder of the village, as a hard working stay at home mother and as a
danceloving-father when he gets his paycheck without his wife knowing; or to put simply, as an
everyday Samoan citizen.
MoneyPACIFIC has produced the Guide and made it easy to understand, and made it
accessible to everyone so that you can plan, measure, prioritise or just to be aware of how
much you are spending for everyday necessities. Again the intension is not to dictate how
much your wallet is crying but to ensure that your wallet is happy to deliver a well sought out
purpose for you and your families.
To round up my remarks, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the New Zealand and
Australian Governments for the support afforded to the MoneyPACIFIC iniative as we have
benefitted greatly from the work it carries out for the Pacific communities. I would like to
thank each and every one of you for making the time to attend today's MoneyPACIFIC
Money Guide launch. But before I hand you over to the MoneyPACIFIC team for their
presentation I truly believe your goals and objectives in your respective designations can be
greatly complemented with our agenda of financial literacy and that this latest resource will
be of use to the pursuit of youth and women empowerment, assist the micro-entreprenuers,
complement student learnings from the existing national education curricula, and overall
greatly assist us in all our diverse capacities as financial consumers.
Manuia le tātou fa'amoemoe.
Thank you.