After successfully privatising and consolidating the financial sector, the government is now focusing on targeted financial initiatives for reaching the poor, said a press release. The Finance Ministry, in conjunction with the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), is undertaking a comprehensive consumer survey titled the Access to Finance Study (A2FS).
Funding assistance is being provided by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the World Bank and the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation (SDC).
The implementation of the survey is being managed by the Pakistan Microfinance Network (PMN). The AC Nielsen Pakistan (Pvt) Limited will conduct the field work, with technical support from the FinMark Trust, which is a South Africa-based NGO, with extensive experience of conducting similar financial access surveys (FinScope) across Africa.
The Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) will provide the sample design, thus lending credibility to survey findings. The survey will gauge the degree of accessibility of financial services to all Pakistanis - rich and poor, across the urban and rural landscapes.
It spans 10,500 respondents across the four provinces and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and represents the first serious attempt to understand the consumers' perspectives vis-à-vis access to both formal and informal financial services.-PR