Accra, June 17, GNA - Financial experts attending the ongoing partnership forum dubbed; "Making Finance Work for Africa" have called for strengthening of credit support institutions to instil confidence in the credit services sector of the continent's financial industry. They have also called for the provision of useful information on credit ratings and collateral loans to the clients to enable them to make better decisions.

Speaking at the forum, Dr. Louis Kasekende, Chief Economist at the Africa Development Bank (AfDB), said to make finance work for Africa, credit must be directed to the private sector to stimulate growth. He called for easy access to credit and a reduction on cost of finance, saying this would help reduce cost of intermediation normally associated with default. Dr. Kasekende said most of the problems facing the finance industry cut across countries on the continent and urgent solutions were needed if the greater chunk of the population was to be provided access to financial services.

Mr. Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, called on African governments, development partners and the private sector to work collectively to come out with solutions for the development of the African financial sector. He said the key to deepening the financial sector in Africa rested in a conscious effort of working together to share best practices and to promote regional integration of financial services. According to him, countries with functioning financial markets grew faster and achieved lower poverty rates by channelling resources to most productive use, reduced dependence on external financing and facilitated risks management. Dr. Paul Acquah, Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), called for the transformation of the traditional financial system to make it beneficial to all.

He said the extension of financial services to every member of the society remained a challenge that would have to be addressed. Dr. Acquah said payments systems had been modernized to improve access to finance by small-scale industries, which continued to remain low. The two-day conference is looking at ways to improve access of low-income households and micro-entrepreneurs to financial services and to promote growth to enable sustainable poverty reduction through focus on more formal parts of the financial system in order to increase the availability of credit for productive enterprises. 17 June 08