Microfinance is a real success story for Pakistan. The progress this country has made in just a few years has been incredible. From woefully inadequate access to banking, millions of Pakistanis have been given access to financial products - and many small businesses to much-needed finance. In 2008, when the British government through its Department for International Development began working with the State Bank of Pakistan, just 11% of people in Pakistan had bank accounts, and just 4% of women. Lending to micro and small enterprises was almost non-existent. Today, 23% of people have access to formal financial services, including 11% of women with a bank account - and there are 4.2 million micro-borrowers.
The initiative we launched in 2008 in collaboration with State Bank, created two funds that offered guarantees - one for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and other for microfinance institutions. This successful initiative showed not only that this market exists and that these enterprises wanted financial services - but it also showed that it made good business sense for lenders. The guarantees have shown to the financial industry new exciting opportunities in Pakistan.
Our guarantee fund with the State Bank has helped increase the banking sector's financing to microfinance institutions by Rs 20 billion. More importantly, we have shown the value of investing in microfinance institutions and now banks are providing financing without our guarantee fund on the basis of good credit histories and strong balance sheets. This is the way it should be. Thanks to that initial funding proving the value of this market and establishing working systems, these microfinance institutions now serve 4.2 million micro-borrowers - an increase of 200% since 2009, when there were only 1.4 million micro-borrowers.
We've been helping microfinance develop behind the scenes too. We have helped the Pakistan Microfinance Network develop its systems to operate effectively, and worked with the State Bank and other partners to develop Pakistan's first National Financial Inclusion Strategy.
Another highly successful initiative was Tameer Bank's EasyPaisa. Our funding helped develop the technology and strengthen capacity. On its launch in 2009, Tameer Bank - in partnership with Telenor - allowed Pakistani people to bank on their mobile phones for the first time. An entirely new market has developed from zero mobile banking accounts in 2009 to over 15 million today. The bank has gone from strength to strength: EasyPaisa has since won the Wall Street Journal's Financial Inclusion Challenge People's Choice Award in 2015, while Tameer Microfinance Bank won Pakistan's Best Microfinance Bank and "Bank the Unbanked" award for financial inclusion at the first ever Pakistan Banking Awards.
We now want to help strengthen investment in micro and small enterprises so that they have the scale to drive the economic growth that Pakistan needs to secure a better future for its people. We established Karandaaz in 2014 under the Chairmanship of Dr Ishrat Husain, the former Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan. Karandaaz is already pioneering models such as supply chain finance to SMEs and with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, taking the first steps towards a more sophisticated system of mobile services between the government and Pakistani citizens.
This week the Minister for Finance, Ishaq Dar, is launching on behalf of Karandaaz the Pakistan Microfinance Investment Company - or PMIC. Under the Chairmanship of Zubyr Soomro, the former head of the Karachi Stock Exchange, United Bank Limited and Citibank, PMIC is a partnership between Karandaaz, the British government through the Department for International Development, the German government's investment arm KfW and the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund.
PMIC is vitally important to Pakistan's investment climate. It is moving from the model of the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund, which had a lending portfolio that was financed by international donors - including the UK government - to a model where the funding comes entirely from commercial lenders. This is an important step in Pakistan's economic development, and is thanks to the leadership and commitment of the State Bank and of the Minister of Finance.
Given what has already been achieved, we expect in a few years' time that other countries will be looking at Pakistan as a leader in micro and SME finance. More importantly we are confident that the majority of Pakistanis will have bank accounts, micro and small businesses will have the capital they need to grow, and Pakistan's financial services, mobile and technology industries have brought to market innovative products that change how business is done for the better.
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