International Development written question – answered at on 18 December 2007.
Annette Brooke
Shadow Spokesperson (Children, Schools and Families), Shadow Minister (Education), Shadow Spokesperson (Home Affairs)
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if he will provide an update on the financial sector deepening project in Uganda.
Gareth Thomas
Parliamentary Under-Secretary(Department for International Development) (Trade Policy) (also Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform), Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) (Trade and Consumer Affairs) (also Department for International Development), Party Chair, Co-operative Party
We have provided £7 million over the past six years to deepen the capacity of Uganda's financial sector to meet the financial needs of poor rural and urban households. Our support has contributed towards Uganda being recognised internationally as a success story in microfinance. We are working closely with other donors and government to agree how our support should be continued. Our current phase of support finishes this January.
Our support has helped the implementation of a major survey to develop comprehensive national data on financial access in Uganda for the first time. Ugandans are now better informed when designing policies to support the sector. In addition our programme has supported a financial consumer education campaign to better inform microfinance consumers of their rights and responsibilities. The programme also helped a range of financial institutions improve services to better meet the needs of over 750,000 clients and establish over 4,000 self-managed village savings and loan associations. This has helped provide financial services to those who miss out on services from formal financial institutions.
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