World Bank president to open 2013 Microcredit Summit
MANILA -- World Bank president Jim Yong Kim will open the 2013 Microcredit Summit: Partnerships against Poverty on October 9 with a recorded statement urging the nearly 800 delegates from 69 countries to commit themselves to the advancement of microfinance to end extreme poverty.
The World Bank’s two new goals to end extreme poverty by the year 2030 and to increase the incomes of the poorest 40 percent “are now the central purpose and moral underpinnings of our institution,” explained World Bank President Kim.
“To achieve this bold vision, all of us will have to work together, including civil society, as well as our public and private sector partners. The many organizations involved in the Microcredit Summit Campaign and the 100 Million Project are making important contributions to these goals…Together we can achieve an important milestone in human history. A world that is free—truly free—from extreme poverty,” he added.
Also leading off the Summit is Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Amando Tetangco Jr., Philippines Secretary of the Department of Budget and Management Florencio “Butch” Abad, Indonesian Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs Syarifuddin Hasan, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus.
“We have the ability to transform the lives of the world’s poorest,” Prof. Yunus declared. “We just need to come together. Public-private initiatives and social business can make this happen.”
Delegates at the 2013 Summit will explore the different roles that microfinance institutions, banks, payment providers, regulators, policy makers, and social development organizations can play in partnership to help in the process of ending severe poverty.
“This Summit promises to be a momentous and inspiring event,” said Microcredit Summit Campaign director Larry Reed, “as a range of new partnerships against poverty are initiated. We are organizing this Summit in such a way that its influence and impact continues far beyond our days together in Manila.”
Concentrating on Public-Private Partnerships, the upcoming Summit seeks to combine the expertise of the microfinance field and other sectors, such as health, education, and agriculture, in order to provide services and infrastructure more efficiently and sustainably. “Summit attendees will gain a great deal in terms of new ideas and exciting partnerships. The agenda is crafted to provide practical lessons to meet challenges and opportunities head on. It will also inspire participants to return home with a renewed commitment to reach deeper into poverty and to work together on our collective mission to eradicate extreme poverty in the near future.”
Sessions featured on Day 1 (October 9th) include a plenary featuring leaders from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, MicroEnsure, and the Partnering Initiative that explores innovative examples of partnerships that create opportunities for people living in poverty that no single actor could provide on their own.
Other sessions will cover topics of public-private partnerships to incentivize savings among the poor, the microfinance sector adopting cloud banking, and the business case for providing green energy to the 1.7 billion people off the electrical grid, an untapped market that has an estimated value of US$194 billion.
The 2013 Partnerships against Poverty Summit is a global conference organized by the Microcredit Summit Campaign and the Microfinance Council of the Philippines Inc. in Manila, Philippines, this October 9-11. Members of the Press are invited to attend.
For more information on the 2013 Summit, visit: http://partnershipsagainstpoverty.org/ (PR)