Queen Maxima highly praises financial inclusion in Bangladesh

Visiting Dutch Queen Maxima Zorreguieta Cerruti today highly praised the expansion of financial inclusion in Bangladesh through simplification of the digital financial services.

She also assured Bangladesh of extending cooperation to enhance the 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 this morning.

BGMEA President Rubana Huq and BRAC Bank managing director and CEO Selim RF Hossain told BSS about the outcome of the meeting with the Dutch Queen.

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.

Selim Hossain quoting the Queen said that Bangladesh witnessed remarkable improvement in financial inclusion over the last couple of years although gender discrimination is there to some extent in case of getting financial services.

The meeting was informed that the women are lagging behind the males in terms of getting banking and financial services and all concerned stakeholders need to work together to make the financial transaction system more digitized to reduce this discrimination.

Mentioning that some 45 lakh workers are now working in the country’s RMG sector, the Dutch Queen said apart from disbursing their salaries through online, such kind of system should have to be developed so that the workers could do online shopping and also could make other online transactions. She also assured to extend support in this regard.

Earlier on Tuesday evening, UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development and Dutch Queen M xima arrived in Dhaka.

Queen M xima, 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.