Bank of PNG embarks on digital mapping

The Bank of Papua New Guinea and the Centre for Excellence in Financial Inclusion (CEFI) has entered into a partnership with a French company called Horus Telecom and Utilities on a digital mapping exercise that will begin to map PNG’s financial infrastructure.
These in include bank branches, sub-branches, ATMs, agents and EFTPOS (electronic funds transfer at point of sale) terminals.
Improving access to financial services remains one of the development challenges for the country and this mapping exercise is one of the collaborative efforts to extend financial services to the unbanked majority.
The digital dashboard for financial inclusion will make it possible to visualise the geographic concentration and overall landscape of PNG’s financial services infrastructure, and user context to measure and analyze access to financial services geographically.
“This will be a comprehensive digital dashboard that will display a range of information like population data per lowest government administrative level, demographic data, number of access points per institution including distance to access points, mobile phone net-work penetration, financial education coverage and even a reporting system road map,” says Saliya Ranasinghe, director of CEFI.
“This dashboard grounded in objective data and indicators will enable CEFI to manage and analyse data assisting decision-makers to formulate new policies and programs, facilitate the expansion of agent banking and e-money, or to implement new financial education schemes in areas where uptake of financial services is low.
“With financial institutions around PNG on board, the dashboard serves as a monitoring and evaluation framework to ensure CEFI and BPNG can track progress towards PNG’s financial inclusion targets.”
The digital dashboard for financial inclusion project is funded by the microfinance expansion project (MEP).
MEP is co-funded by the Asian Development Bank, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and PNG government and is designed to strengthen the growth of the microfinance sector in PNG.

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