##powering our children and youth with the knowledge to develop the habits of cost avoidance and resource control. for example, the wise use of power or electricity ; controlling the amount of water we use ; or taking good care of public properties ; all these are about cost avoidance and savings. even the throwing of our garbage in proper rubbish bins avoids the costly exercise of hiring people to clean up our towns and villages. it is time that all of us ; the government, financial institutions, schools, teachers, parents and family to empower our children and youth with knowledge and experience to participate in resource saving habits and avoid habits that can incur costs. let us empower them to take part and save smart! finally, let me take this opportunity to thank all of you who are part of this event today. let me especially thank the six primary schools ; namely burns creek adventist primary school ; florence young christian primary school ; saint nicholas primary school, chung wah primary school, saint john primary school and bishop epalle primary school, for accepting our invitation to be part of the program and to teach your primary school students about financial education over the course of the past 6 weeks. i hope your schools will continue to help spread the gospel of ‘ take part, save smart! ’ and take the lead in teaching financial education in your schools in years to come. i must thank our three commercial banks who were very happy to be the schools foster banks for sparing time today to come and give real life examples of translating what has been taught in the classrooms to being able to open bank accounts and learn about the many saving products and services that commercial banks offer to the communities. i hope that the relationship that you have forged with the school and children will grow in many years ahead. also big thanks to all our stakeholders who are here to encourage all of us to ‘ take part and save smart! finally, let me thank our cbsi 40th anniversary committee, who had been planning this event. without their effort we will not be celebrating this event today. bis central bankers ’ speeches learning is about having fun and i am sure there is so much to learn from the stalls of our stakeholders today. i urge all of you to take part and save smart! thank you. bis central bankers ’ speeches

denton rarawa : financial inclusion opening address by mr denton rarawa, governor of central bank of solomon islands, at the 10th meeting of the pacific islands working group ( piwg ) on “ financial inclusion ”, honiara, 12 – 14 february 2013. * * * salutations governor loi bakani ; deputy governor peter tari ; deputy governor gane simbe ; co - chairs ms lana lome - ieremia and vereimi levula ; resource persons for the data workshop ms sandford and mr dermish ; representatives from our key partners : mr reuben summerlin and jeff liew from pacific pfip and mr eliki boletawa from afi ; other participants of the pacific islands working group ( piwg ) meeting ; ladies and gentlemen ; welcome to solomon islands good morning and let me warmly welcome you all to solomon islands. thank all of you for making time to attend this 10th piwg meeting. i am delighted to see a lot of familiar faces. and it is good to see everyone smiling this morning even though some of you have travelled a long way to be here. pacific islands working group – a family committed to each other the idea to set up the pacific islands working group was endorsed during the south pacific governors meeting here in honiara in 2009. so this meeting can be described as the piwg coming back to its roots. the exciting agendas before us and the opportunities to share country experiences amongst members during these three days are the main reasons why we are all here. i think it is important to regularly remind ourselves of the objectives of piwg, when it was established four years ago. the objectives of piwg are as follows : • to identify barriers and challenges to financial inclusion unique to the pacific, and formulate appropriate policy responses. • to work together to advance financial inclusion policy in the region, • to learn from each other as members develop and implement policy solutions for financial inclusion. i commend the piwg for taking a collaborative approach to addressing the financial inclusion issues and challenges in the region by working together and sharing our individual experiences. we face similar but also different “ country - specific ” challenges. for example, our countries are separated by the sea but the level of separation differs between countries. with these inherent challenges, we have no choice but to work together as a group. i believe that is what we have done and already we have made progress and achieved a lot in our respective countries. we have ensured