OREANDA-NEWS. The Alliance for Financial Inclusion provided the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus with a grant worth EUR201,023 to implement the project "Developing Regional Cooperation in Promoting Access to Finance in Eastern Europe and CIS".

The funds received will be allocated in 2015 for carrying out a national poll on the key issues of usage of financial services by natural persons, developing State Program on Improving Access to Finance for the Population of the Republic of Belarus for 2016 – 2021, holding a Regional Financial Inclusion Forum for CEE & CIS in Minsk, as well as organizing a number of consultative seminars and conferences to discuss urgent issues on financial inclusion and work out ways of their solution.

As part of cooperation with the Alliance for Financial Inclusion in 2011-2013 the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus at the expense of the grant worth EUR275,855 implemented the project "Measuring Access to Finance: Developing Evidence-based Access Policies in Belarus". As the result of comprehensive national studies involving the assessment of financial inclusion, information on the usage of financial services by households and small businesses of our country was obtained, detailed charts of financial inclusion in terms of financial products were compiled, as well as the data on financial literacy of the users in different regions of the country were received.

The research revealed that the majority of population is completely excluded from financial market of the Republic of Belarus. 15.4% of the respondents do not use financial services at all; 30.3% of the respondents use only 1-2 financial services, which are usually connected with the payroll accounting.

Settlement and cash services account for the majority of services used by the households – 69.3% of the pollees take advantage of them; the minority of population uses savings services – 16.4% of respondents. Lending services account for one-fifth part of the respondents (18.5%), and insurance services – just over half of the citizens (55.6%).

As for the level of the households’ financial literacy, only 5% of the pollees managed to answer all the questions correctly, 44% gave the wrong answers

In March 2014, a meeting of the AFI Consumer Empowerment and Market Conduct Working Group was held in Minsk, during which topical issues related to financial literacy and education, provision of assistance to consumers of financial services and citizens’ appeals, institutional supervision structure, fair lending, transparency and disclosure of information were discussed at a high international level. Holding the meeting of the Working Group in Belarus rather than anywhere else became a kind of recognition of the large-scale and effective activities of our country in the field of improving access to finance, including financial literacy and protection of consumers of financial services, as well as the leading position of the Republic of Belarus in the Eastern Europe and the CIS in addressing these issues.

The National Bank is interested in deepening cooperation with the AFI in the field of improving access to finance (therefore it actively participates in meetings of the AFI Working Groups on different issues), conducting a mutual exchange of information on fulfilling obligations taken by the AFI’s member states as part of the Maya Declaration, developing the system of enhancing financial literacy and protecting consumers of financial services, working out the issue on transiting the AFI into a full-scale institution with a new structure and payment of membership fees, as well as claims the participation of the National Bank’s representatives in the governing bodies of the AFI’s new structure.

As part of the national task on enhancing financial literacy of the population and improving access to financial services for different categories of citizens, the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus intends to continue a systematic work on further strengthening of cooperation with international organizations and consolidation of the efforts of all participants of the national financial market in order to ensure a comprehensive approach to implementing the activities planned in the field of provision of effective access to finance for the population of the Republic of Belarus.