The Meeting of Deputy Finance Ministers and Deputy Governors of Central Banks in the framework of APEC 2017 took place on February 23, 2017 in Nha Trang city, Khanh Hoa province. This was the first activity in the Finance Ministers' Process (FMP) including series of events in APEC year 2017 hosted by Vietnam.
The meeting was attended by Deputy Finance Ministers and Deputy Governors of Central Banks from 21 member countries of APEC, high-level representatives of international financial institutions including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) under the co-chairmanship of Deputy Minister of Finance Tran Xuan Ha and Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) Nguyen Thi Hong.
APEC 2017 theme was "Creating new dynamism, fostering a shared future" to create the motivation of economic growth and the linkage to improve the structural reform and innovation and promote the role of SMEs enterprises. Accordingly, Vietnam set up the cooperation objectives in 4 major priorities such as: Accelerating the economic linkage in order to meet the demand of cooperative expansion of Asia and the Pacific; promoting sustainable and inclusive growth; consolidating food security and sustainable agriculture development, and climate change adaptation; and improving competitive and creative capacity of micro small, small and medium enterprises (MSME) in digital millennium. Basing on the National priorities and Cebu Action Plan (CAP), the co-chairmen led the participants to focus the discussion on such topics as: Funding for infrastructure development; financial inclusion; funding and disaster insurance.
The first session of the meeting namely “Global & Regional Economic Outlook” was chaired by Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong with the participation of speakers from IMF, WB, ADB and PSU. The session attenders unanimously agreed with the conclusion that global and regional economy has shown positive signals together with a number of risks including fluctuation of international finance market, political and economic movements of several economies over the world.
*The SBV hosted session on financial inclusion of APEC namely “Financial inclusion in supporting sustainable agricultural and rural development”
On February 24, 2017, under the framework of the Meeting of Deputy Finance Ministers and Deputy Governors of Central Banks of APEC 2017 in Nha Trang, SBV Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong chaired the session to discuss the priority cooperation in APEC year 2017 and the role of financial inclusion in supporting sustainable agricultural and rural development. This was also the major cooperation substance in financial inclusion proposed and collected by the host country, Vietnam.
Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong chaired the session on financial inclusion
The session was attended by the SBV entities and more than 100 domestic and international representatives including APEC financial officials, senior experts from international financial institutions as WB, OECD, ADB, IDF, AFI and insurance enterprises.
Speaking at the opening of the meeting, SBV Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong asserted that sustainable agricultural and rural development was the big concern of Vietnam as well as other APEC economies and international organizations, especially in the context of international integration and climate change. It required a stronger and synchronous combination of the effective development of credit market and financial products and services in order to meet effectively demand of agricultural and rural development, thereby contributing to the sustainable poverty reduction.
Vietnam strongly believed that the solution for this issue shall be obtained very well via the cooperation mechanism of APEC 2017 on financial inclusion.
Participants of the Meeting of Deputy Finance Ministers and Deputy Governors of Central Banks of APEC 2017
In the coming time, the SBV will continue to cooperate with APEC countries as well as relevant domestic agencies to do research in order to accelerate financial inclusion in line with the framework of APEC cooperation and Vietnam as well, with a special focus on boosting credit for agriculture and rural area.
The session was successful and attracted very positive discussion of participants with a unanimous consent to push ahead the implementation of financial inclusion in APEC economies for the aim of strengthening the sustainable development. The substances and results of this session will be the orientation of APEC economies in APEC year 2017 on financial inclusion.
Thoa Le