KARACHI: For the 20th time at Davos Pathfinder Group, this time in partnership with UBank, hosted the traditional PAKISTAN BREAKFAST at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Summit 2023.
The chief guest, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Climate Change Ms Sherry Rehman, highlighted the havoc played on the people of Pakistan because of climate change, its effect on our financial landscape and the deteriorating regional situation because of the security challenges in and around Afghanistan.
WEF’s Managing Director Mirek Dušek emphasized WEF’s commitment to helping Pakistan showcase its achievements and deliver positive impact for its people by having brought together for many years leaders from business government, international organization and civil society to promote Pakistan’s potential, mentioning WEF’s EDISON ALLIANCE as a global movement accelerating collaboration between the ICT community and other critical sectors of the economy.
He congratulated Pathfinder for working with over 350 organizations of the Alliance from the public and private sectors committed to improving the lives of one billion people with better solutions for (1) Financial Inclusion, (2) Education & (3) Health.
He said that Virtual Remittance Gateway (VRG)’s “Asaan Mobile Account” (AMA) Scheme, the World Bank financial inclusion Initiative regulated by both State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) was shortlisted by WEF’s EDISON ALLIANCE for being No. 3 in the world for financial inclusion and thus one of the Lighthouse Countries (only 2 at the moment).
Ross Perot Jr, Chairman Perot Companies USA and former Chairman Eastwest Institute (EWI), called for strengthening the US Pakistan relationship positively to deter the discriminatory policies of the present non-inclusive Afghan regime with its inherent potential for increasing terrorism in the region and the world. He said that while military ties were important, the emphasis should be primarily economic for the future.
Speaking at the event Kabeer Naqvi President & CEO UBank commented about the partnership with Pathfinder Group and said, “As a mission driven bank with financial inclusion for citizens across all societal segments as our objective, we are glad to have entered into this collaboration with Pathfinder Group. This gives us an opportunity to expand our digital outreach and bring the unbanked population into the financial ecosystem in an efficient manner”.
Chairman Pathfinder Group, Zarrar Sehgal shared his views on the importance of this Digital Inclusive Finance and how the digital transformation for Financial Inclusion will be benefited through the AMA Scheme.
Thanking the WEF through Mirek Dušek for the EDISON ALLIANCE’s consideration of Pakistan as a possible Lighthouse Country, he said this will attract more investment into Pakistan especially in Fintech and Banking industry. He said it is a proud moment for Pakistan for VRG to have Pakistan mentioned as No. 3 in the world in financial inclusion in the EDISON ALLIANCE report.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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