Governor of Bank Indonesia Addresses MCSC Summit

Excerpts from remarks at the Asia-Pacific summit by Dr. Boediono, Governor of Bank Indonesia:
Indonesia has had a long experience with the efforts to develop microfinance. With its vast geographic area and long entrepreneurship history, Indonesia's microfinance sector has become one of the largest in the world. It is estimated that over 50,000 microfinance institutions exist today with some as old as over 100 years. Indonesia has a wide range of microcredit schemes; from cooperatives, pawn shops, to banks. In the banking sector, we have a great many rural banks (more than 3,000 offices nationwide) and, perhaps most well known to the microcredit world, is the Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) Unit Desas (BRI Village Units.) There are around 4,000 BRI Village Units spread out nationwide with their SME empowerment programs. Notwithstanding all this, we feel that we still need to learn from the experiences of other countries.
Despite the rich experience with the microfinance sector, we find that there remain nearly 40 million low-income people in this country still lacking access to microfinance services. Such statistics clearly indicate that there is much room for expansion and improvement. Micro-entrepreneurs and the underprivileged deserve our highest attention, not only because they deserve a fair chance to bettering their own lives, but also because they represent a very important pillar to every nation's economy and, indeed, democracy.