On October 12, 2023, Governor Nguyen Thi Hong of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) attended as one of the panelists at the event themed "A Livable Planet for All: Championing Digitization by Women", which was jointly organized by the Southeast Asia Group Offices at the World Bank Group (WBG) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the sidelines of the 2023 IMF/WBG Annual Meetings, which are held this year in Marrakech, the Kingdom of Morocco.
Speaking at the event, the SBV Governor shared about the current situation of the digital transformation in Vietnam, with the active participation of the banking industry in this process, and the role of women in promoting the national digital transformation. Accordingly, the digital economy’s contributions to the GDP are estimated at 14.96% in the first half of 2023. Vietnam ranks 86/193 in the e-Government Index, and 76/193 in the Online Service Index among the United Nations member countries, and is predicted to have the highest digital economic growth rate in the ASEAN region for the period of 2022-2025. Vietnam also considers the promotion of innovations, the development of a digital economy and a digital society to be one of the strategic breakthroughs to realize the goal of becoming a high-income country by 2045. To successfully realize this goal, the SBV Governor emphasized the importance of the proactive, strong, and well-orchestrated participation by all of the Ministries and agencies.
Governor Nguyen Thi Hong also shared about the proactive participation of the banking industry in the digital transformation of the economy through the issuance of several guiding documents on the provision of online banking services, with encouraging implementation results, for example: (i) 77.41% of Vietnamese adults now own at least one bank account; (ii) the basic banking services have been mainly performed via the digital channels; (iii) Vietnam has completed the connections for retail payment via QR codes with Thailand, and has been finalizing the connections with Cambodia; and the SBV has signed MOUs with a number of ASEAN member states on establishing a regional payment connection system; (v) the SBV has been actively implementing the application of the National Population Database in the customer information authentication, and has regularly conducted programs on financial education and communication.
The SBV Governor also mentioned that, in Vietnam, the gender aspects have received special attention by the leaders of the Party, the State and the Government, and the role of women has been increasingly acknowledged through their active participation in all aspects of the socio-economy, including in the banking sector. Therefore, women can effectively contribute to the promotion of the digital transformation of the banking industry, while the banking sector has been one of the leading agencies in the digital transformation among all Vietnamese ministries and agencies. From the perspective of banking service users, in Asian cultures like Vietnam, women are often responsible for managing the family’s incomes and expenditures, so it is necessary to provide women with knowledge and information about the application of technologies in the banking operations, helping them to safely and effectively access the services through the digital channels.
On this occasion, the SBV Governor recommended that the WBG and other multilateral development banks (MDBs), with their roles in providing finance and policy advice for the sustainable development, should promote the gender equality worldwide through a series of actions, such as: (i) organizing regular dialogues and discussions on gender related issues at different levels, both for the public and the private sectors, so that women can share information and learn from each other's experience in the digital transformation; (ii) integrating the gender commitments into the projects implemented at the member countries, and develop specialized projects on promoting the role of women in the digital transformation; (iii) providing the member countries with consultancy services to improve the understanding and the knowledge of the digital transformation applications for women in different roles and positions.
Also within the framework of the event, the participants attended a launching ceremony of an initiative for financing women entrepreneurs (WE Finance Code), which was initiated by the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative with the aim of accelerating systematic changes, thereby narrowing the gap in financial access for women entrepreneurs.
Le Hang