PH Mission to UN Leads Discussions to Leverage Fintech, Expand Financial Inclusion
NEW YORK 31 January 2019 — As Vice President of the United Nations Economic and Security Council (UN ECOSOC), the Philippines led the discussions on “Fintech and Financial Inclusion” during a working lunch of the UN ECOSOC Bureau with the Executive Directors and Senior Staff of the World Bank Group on 17 January 2019 in Washington, D.C.
In her opening statement, Charge d’Affaires a.i. and Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Kira Danganan-Azucena underlined that at the UN, more space should and can still be given to discuss the new technologies and their impacts on our daily lives.
Ambassador Danganan-Azucena stated that financial inclusion remains a priority for ECOSOC and the UN since it is an important enabler of development progress and a means of realizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She cited of the Task Force on Digital Financing launched by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, to leverage the potential of innovative technologies for financial inclusion.
Citing the experience of the Philippines, Ambassador Danganan-Azucena shared that the country has made financial inclusion a priority through its National Strategy for Financial Inclusion. This Strategy is based on four pillars: policy regulation and supervision, financial education and consumer protection, advocacy, and data and measurement.
The working lunch was part of the UN ECOSOC Bureau’s visit to the World Bank Group in preparation for the 2019 ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development (FfD) follow-up in April 2019 in particular the special high-level meeting of the Council with the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization, and the UN Conference on Trade and Development.
The UN delegation led by ECOSOC President Inga Rhonda King included representatives from the UN ECOSOC Bureau namely the Philippines, Norway, Belarus, and Morocco, and the UN Secretariat.
To contextualize the current challenge, Ambassador Azucena-Danganan quoted author and historian Mr. Yuval Noah Harari: “The democratic system is unequipped to deal with the next shocks, such as the rise of [artificial intelligence] and the blockchain revolution. Already today, computers have made the financial system so complicated that few humans can understand it. As AI improves, we might soon reach a point when no human can make sense of finance anymore. What will that do to the political process? Can you imagine a government that waits humbly for an algorithm to approve its budget or its new tax reform? Meanwhile, peer-to-peer blockchain networks about cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin might completely revamp the monetary system, making radical tax reforms inevitable.”
The Ambassador also underlined the importance of exploring areas of collaboration between member countries and the international financial institutions such as World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund on fintech innovations and financial inclusion.
She recalled that the World Bank Group and the IMF launched the “Bali Fintech Agenda” on 11 October 2018 in Nusa Dua Bali, Indonesia during the 2018 IMF-WBG Annual Meetings. The said agenda comprised a set of 12 policy elements aimed at assisting member countries to achieve the benefits and opportunities of advances in financial technology. She inquired on the World Bank vision for the Bali Fintech Agenda, and how it supports the efforts towards achieving the 2030 Agenda.
The UN ECOSOC Bureau also met with the Executive Directors and IMF Senior Staff where the IMF presented its update on the Global Economic Outlook. The meetings with the WBG and the IMF also discussed thematic topics on Public debt, vulnerability and the SDGs, and on “The future of work and job creation.”
The Bureau’s visit to Washington, D.C. also provided an opportunity to engage the Bretton Woods Institutions in the preparation of the High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development, to be held in September 2019 at the UN Headquarters in New York. END
For more information, visit www.newyorkpm.dfa.gov.ph/ www.un.int/philippines or https://www.facebook.com/PHMissionNY/
