Dhaka, Bangladesh,March 8th2022 - To celebrate International Women’s Day, UNDP, UN Women and UNCDF jointly organised an event in Dhaka with several financial institutions in Bangladesh to highlight the importance of better and easier access to finance for women.

The event was an initiative of the “WING : Women’s Empowerment for Inclusive Growth ” project, funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Bangladesh.

Stressing the need for accessible loans for women, Sudipto Mukerjee, Resident Representative, UNDP Bangladesh, said,

“We must create an enabling environment for women who are in the cottage, micro, small and medium businesses if we want to see sustainable progress in economic development for Bangladesh. Our WING project is working with the Government of Bangladesh, financial institutions and the women themselves to empower women and to help Bangladesh achieve the SDGs by 2030”

Of the almost 8 million businesses in Bangladesh, 99.93 percent are cottage or micro, small and medium enterprises (CMSMEs) – and women own 7.2 percent of these businesses, according to a 2016 report by International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group.

“In most cases, women entrepreneurs are not aware of the financial services available, how to access them and how to leverage them for sustaining thier businesses. It is critical to have gender-responsive policies that identify gender-specific needs to work with women Cottage, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (CMSMEs). At the same time, building technical capacity of women entrepreneurs, especially on digital tools, is also essential.” Said Diya Nanda, Deputy Country Representative, UN Women.

Women entrepreneurs and women in business are growing in numbers, but they are still facing many challenges and barriers. Among all these constraints, access to finance in order to start or scale up a business appears to be the dominant challenge.

Guest of Honor, Md. Jaker Hossain, General Manager, SME & Special Programmes Department, Bangladesh Bank, thanked everyone for joining this meeting on a vital issue to be solved and said,

“ Without considering total women pool, we need to target the missing middles who are in need of credit facilities. We need to change mindset of women entrepreneurs along with the bank officials, so that they understand the need of proper documentation, keeping the tansaction records and having a bank account/Mobile financial service wallet to get access to credit.”

He also added, “ In order to achieve the target of gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow, we need to emphasis on the target oriented financial literacy and awareness building. Bangladesh bank as the central bank of the country, has provided numerous policy support in order to promote the CMSME women entrepreneurs and minimize the gender gap. We need to ensure implementing the existing policies with support from all stakeholders including all financial institutions to achieve the desired goals.”

“The Netherlands is interested in a stable and economically strong Bangladesh, where plenty of jobs with opportunities for future generations are available, high value goods are produced and business opportunities are found everywhere, and for everyone.” stated Anne Van Leeuwen, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Bangladesh, in his remarks as the Chief Guest.

In this stimulating exchange of knowledge and experience, this has become evident that, with active participation of all relevant actors and positive mindset can ensure getting access to financial resources by the target number of women entreprneurs.

This advocacy meeting would work in facilitating access to finance for female entrepreneursis a win-win situation for both the businesses and the financial institutions. Encouraging and including half of the population, i.e. the women, in economic activities can only increase the economic potential of Bangladesh and assist to pave the way to becoming a Middle Income Country inclusively and faster.”, added Ambassador van Leeuwen.

This round table advocacy meeting aimed to address the existing challenges, ground reality and policy gaps along with the valuable recommendations on the actual needs based on ground reality. Master of ceremony, Kajal Chatterjee, national project manager, WING UNDP Bangladesh collated all the opinions and observations from the participants to create a common understanding to get desired results from the advocacy meeting. High officials from various banks and non bank financial institutions along with Bangladesh Bank representatives expressed in their speeches that they will work on capacity building, implantation of existing policies and policy reforms in terms of changed business scenario. Lessening the volume of documentation, collateral free loan amount fixation and disbursment time for new CMSME business owners, emphasis on getting credits by women led businesses will be prioritized in coming days, financial institution representatives said.

One of the key objectives of this UN Joint Programme, WING, is to ensure that women have sustainable improvements in income and economic security at the local level with more women having access to local economic opportunities, private and public financial services as well as income-generating activities.
Among others, representatives from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Bangladesh Bank and other public and private Banks, Non-Bank financial institutions and WING programme officials attended the meeting.

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ABOUT UNCDF
The UN Capital Development Fund makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world's 46 least developed countries (LDCs). UNCDF offers "last mile" finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development. UNCDF's financing models work through three channels: (1) inclusive digital economies, which connect individuals, households, and small businesses with financial ecosystems that catalyse participation in the local economy, and provide tools to climb out of poverty and manage financial lives; (2) local development finance, which capacitates localities through fiscal decentralisation, innovative municipal finance, and structured project finance to drive local economic expansion and sustainable development; and (3) investment finance, which provides catalytic financial structuring, de-risking, and capital deployment to drive SDG impact and domestic resource mobilisation.