PlaNetFinance UAE - Dubai Conference 2006

The development of Corporate Social Responsibility values has offered corporations, private foundations and benefactors the chance to play an important role in the development of microfinance and the promotion of sustainable development. These institutions can help MFIs reinforce their capacities and can serve as new sources of finance, therby adding to the development of a solid services industry on the whole. Several important examples of microfinance projects initiated by corporations, private foundations and benefactors already exist and have proven that these institutions can participate in economic development and poverty alleviation.
The panel will showcase companies, or private benefactors who have chosen to support microfinance development in the MENA region.

In the Middle East, governments and international financial institutions (IFIs) have played key roles in launching microfinance sectors. This has included establishing their country’s first microfinance institutions, bestowing important grants, and providing large-scale technical assistance to ensure the use of Best Practices. However, as more and more institustions reach operational and financial sustainability and increase their number of clients, governments and public agencies must also adapt their roles and policies. For governments, this includes creating and enabling legal environments that will allow MFIs to become full-fledged and financial institutions that can be then integrated into the formal financial sector. For IFIs, this means helping MFIs find new sources of commercial finance by leveraging the private sector. These actors also play essential roles in creating sector-wide infrastructure to promote transparency, the creation of national benchmarks, and communication between different stakeholders.
This session will demonstrate through case studies the relationship between governments and international and public agencies on one side and microfinance sector on the other side.

Although microfinance is only in its nascent stage in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, it has an important role to play in the reduction of welfare assistance and the promotion of economic entrepreneurship among the region’s youth. The overall economic prosperity of the GCC countries – characterized by high revenues and GDP per capita – hides important contrasts in terms of wealth distribution. Vulnerable groups facing situations either close to poverty or poverty itself – women, mostly widowed or divorcee, unemployed youth, rural persons, immigrants – could benefit from microfinance in order to develop income-generating activities. In the last few years, programs have been launched in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE.
In light of these experiences as well as of the results of a market study carried out in 2006 in Oman, the objectives of the session will be to explore relevant ways to adapt microfinance in GCC countries.

Final Word