With over 540 delegates converging on Denarau Island for the Alliance for Financial Inclusion Global Policy Forum, the benefits spread across not only to Fiji but also the South Pacific.

Reserve Bank of Fiji Governor, Barry Whiteside, said we have experts from world-over who have done things in many areas of financial inclusion.

He said many of these things we have never done before or which we are trying to do but having trouble putting these into place.

Therefore, Mr Whiteside said hosting the Global Policy Forum will be a big plus for Fiji and the whole region.

“It’s an annual meeting and something we have aspired to for four years now to get the hosting rights,” he said.

“We laid the interest in Cancoon, Mexico four years ago and we finally brought it home to Fiji.”

“At last count, I was told there are 540 delegates confirmed who have an interest in financial inclusion for this meeting and that’s huge for us and they are from about 81 countries.”

This meeting is in a couple of stages where there is an Alliance for Financial Inclusion AGM today.

This will be followed by the Global Policy Forum on Thursday and Friday which will be opened by Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.

About AFI

AFI is an alliance which is focussing on peer learning and knowledge sharing among policy-making regulatory institutions.

Mr Whiteside said AFI is about sharing of knowledge and collaboration and this was why RBF joined up when they had the opportunity in 2009.

“Fiji became a member of AFI in 2009 and we have really benefitted from the fact we can collaborate with so many countries around the world in the area of financial inclusion,” he said.

“We have what we call Pacific island regional initiative where we share experience with our fellow countries in the region.”