Queen Máxima Zorreguieta Cerruti of the Netherlands has highly praised the development achieved by Bangladesh in recent years and assured of her country’s cooperation in future. Besides, she also expressed her interest about Bangladesh’s future strategies on gender gap reduction, achieving the goal of universal financial access reaping the benefit of innovation in financial sector through Fintech, said a Bangladesh Bank press release on Thursday.
Queen Máxima stressed the need for setting up of an innovation office at the central bank level to take care of financial innovation issues. She also highly praised the expansion of financial inclusion in Bangladesh through simplification of the digital financial services. During the visit, the Dutch Queen, who is also the UN Secretary-General's Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA), met Governor Fazle Kabir and discussed various issues on access to finance and importance of women's access to digital financial services.
Governor Fazle Kabir, expressed his gratitude to the Queen Máxima for visiting Bangladesh Bank and briefed her about the current status of financial inclusion and women empowerment in Bangladesh. He also informed the Dutch Queen about the initiatives taken by Bangladesh Bank in reaching the underserved through Mobile Financial Services, Agent Banking and SME Loans.
He mentioned that Bangladesh Bank has been working to enable the mobile financial services platform interoperable. The Governor further informed the Queen that the formulation of the country’s first ever National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) is at the final stage. Besides, Máxima emphasized the importance of introducing a national identity system including e-KYC and linking it to the digital payment platforms.
She also assured Bangladesh of extending cooperation to enhance participation of the women folk in the financial services. The Netherlands Queen made the remarks at a meeting with the leaders and high officials of the country’s private sector, especially from the BGMEA, banks and financial institutions at a city hotel on Thursday morning.
BGMEA President Rubana Huq said the meeting was discussed on how to bring cent percent RMG workers into digital transaction system through establishing such an eco-system in the RMG sector. In this regard, the Dutch Queen mentioned that if necessary initiative could be taken to exchange technical expertise with those international institutions which are working well with digital financial services worldwide.
Maxima assured to extend cooperation in this regard side by side informed that she would discuss with the development partners on how to strengthen financial inclusion in Bangladesh. Earlier, on Tuesday evening, UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development and Dutch Queen Maxima arrived in Dhaka.
Queen Maxima, since her appointment as Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development in 2009, works worldwide to make safe and affordable financial services available to all, including low-income groups and small and medium-sized enterprises. She has been the honorary patron of the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) since 2011.