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Myanmar’s Roadmap to Financial Inclusion: A Game-Changer for Low-Income Markets
In a major push towards financial inclusion, Myanmar’s government has unveiled a comprehensive roadmap aimed at lowering costs and encouraging commercial entities to enter low-income markets. The initiative seeks to create a sustainable financial sector that can support and deepen financial inclusion, allowing access to previously excluded individuals.
Enhanced Legal Framework
The roadmap recommends an enhanced legal and regulatory framework that allows market players, particularly banks, specialized financial institutions (SFIs), microfinance institutions (MFIs), and cooperatives, to deliver services more effectively. This will enable regulators to improve their capacity to regulate the market more efficiently.
Implementation and Evaluation
To ensure effective implementation, a National Committee will be set up to centrally coordinate, monitor, and evaluate various initiatives related to financial inclusion across different departments and agencies. The committee will comprise key stakeholders from regulatory authorities, line ministries, development partners, public sector entities, and private sector associations.
Working Subgroups
The National Committee will establish working subgroups responsible for implementing specific areas of the roadmap. These groups will consist of stakeholders from regulatory authorities, line ministries, development partners, and private sector entities.
Setting National Targets
As a first step, the National Committee will set national targets and agree on a measurement, tracking, and reporting mechanism to monitor progress.
A New Era for Financial Inclusion in Myanmar
The MAP process was launched in 2013 to address the challenge of diversifying and improving financial services. An extensive stakeholder engagement process has been followed to establish an evidence base for developing a strategy for financial inclusion in Myanmar. The roadmap identifies practical steps to enhance financial inclusion, support policy objectives, and achieve national targets.
Next Steps
The immediate next steps include:
- Launching the Financial Inclusion Roadmap Framework at the ASEAN meeting
- Establishing a Financial Inclusion Inter-Ministerial National Committee
- Confirming national targets
- Adopting the roadmap
- Developing a measurement, tracking, and reporting mechanism
- Establishing working groups to finalize objectives and detailed workplans for each initiative
Private Sector Engagement
As part of the stakeholder engagement process, the National Committee will approach the private sector and potential development partners to assist in implementing various specific interventions. This initiative has the potential to transform Myanmar’s financial landscape and bring about significant benefits to low-income markets.
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