ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar on Tuesday highlighting Pakistan’s achievement through the Asaan Mobile Account (AMA) Scheme to enhance women’s financial inclusion, said the country was ready to replicate its success story with the developing countries.
“Many developing countries are in touch with us directly through world organisations like the Islamic Development Bank, ADB, the AIIB, UNDP, etc. We stand ready to replicate this unique Pakistani success story with their support for the underprivileged and for the deprived women anywhere in the world,” he said addressing a virtual event on “Bridging the Financial Inclusion Gap in Pakistan”.
The event was organised by the World Economic Forum’s Edison Alliance and the Virtual Remittance Gateway.
The prime minister said that his prime objective as the head of the government was to give hope to the poor through the many-to-many platform.
He thanked the World Economic Forum’s Edison Alliance and its head Claude Dyer for recognising Pakistan’s amazing success story of the Asaan Mobile Account (AMA) Scheme on the World Bank’s Financial Inclusion and Women Empowerment Project.
He said under the National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS), the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) collaborated with various branchless banking providers, banks and telecom operators to introduce Third Party Provider Services in Pakistan to facilitate the un-banked and under-banked population.
“The slogan is banking the un-banked. Before the launch of the AMA Scheme, 80% of the population was un-banked, whereas after the soft launch in December 2021 the ratio has improved by 10%. Unfortunately, of the 30% having bank accounts only 18% (less than 5% of the total banking population) are women. With the launch of the AMA accounts 38% are women,” he told the participants.
He said any Pakistani holding a valid National ID Card could open a bank account digitally anywhere without any hassle in less than two minutes in a swift, easy and affordable manner in any AMA participating bank from a smart or a feature phone using a short code of *2262#.
“The account holders can then make transactions without the need for internet connectivity. Already more than 8.5 million Pakistanis without internet facilities have bank accounts and this number is growing by 4000-5000 a day,” he added.
“I believe Pakistan is leading in the opening of bank accounts in Edison Alliance’s 1 Billion Lives Challenge by 2030. The platform’s task is two-fold. The first is to open bank accounts without hassle and the second for the “many-to-many” model to help government and commercial organizations in social welfare and relief programmes, digital lending both Micro and Nano loans, as well as digital insurance to the masses.”