Microfinance institutions asked to reduce poverty level

Accra, Nov. 14, GNA - The Chief Director, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, (MoFEP) Nana Juaben Siriboe on Friday stressed the need for an improved governance structure in microfinance administration in the country. Speaking at the Second Annual General Meeting of the Association of Financial Non-Governmental Organisations (ASSFIN), the Chief Director said MoFEP will help strengthen their organisation and institutional capacities to ensure greater sustainability in the improved performance of core services to their members. He said microfinance was a good strategy for wealth creation and poverty reduction.

However, the biggest challenge is how to transform the access to financial services into strategies that will promote better livelihoods for Ghanaians so as to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's). Mr. Stanley Walters Attafi, the Chairman of ASSFIN, said the association was formed to respond to the challenges and demands of the financial sector. ASSFIN, he said, was therefore in a position to meet the micro financing needs of over 80 per cent of the un-banked productive poor in Ghana. Mr. Emmanuel Oduro Darko, who chaired the function, said poverty would cease when individuals can generate resources to meet their immediate needs.

Mr. Oduro Darko said microfinance organisation were said to help deal decisively with poverty, and a number of organisations took up the task to develop tools to assess the poverty level of their clients and to take them out of poverty.

He therefore expressed the hope that a concrete decision would be taken to bring all financial NGO's under the umbrella institution, (ASSFIN) to make it a vibrant body that would champion the course of its constituents. ASSFIN is a non-profit and independent company which is the Apex and Regulatory body for Financial Non-Governmental Organisations,(FNGO's) in Ghana.