To promote growth in our local communities, we publish extensive data and analysis on the local economy. We provide outreach initiatives, such as our workshops on access to global markets to help small businesses learn about loan programs and sources of credit enhancements. We also run an annual video festival for college students in the Second District. In this program student teams produce videos aimed to help young adults make  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  sound personal financial decisions. A panel of advertising and video professionals selects winning video productions for screening in local movie theaters. As you know, even states as wealthy as Connecticut have large pockets of poverty. So, we target some of our work specifically to low- and moderate-income groups. We have worked hard to help neighborhoods that face high foreclosure rates. This work is important obviously because foreclosures are a terrible event for those who lose their homes. But beyond that, this work is important because high levels of foreclosures affect neighbors’ home values, the local tax base and economic vitality more broadly. We have provided housing counselors and community groups with the latest information on mortgage conditions via mortgage briefs, roundtables, presentations and an interactive web tool that shows very local monthly delinquency and foreclosure conditions. This past fall we hosted a conference on distressed residential real estate to share new expert analysis with senior policymakers and practitioners from across the nation.
The ideas and experiences shared could then be contextualised to the prevailing local conditions to enhance financial inclusion. This proposal was welcomed by the members and resulted in the first Financial Inclusion Advisers programme conducted in Lusaka, Zambia in April 2009. The success of this inaugural programme hosted led us to this second programme hosted here in Malaysia with the support of JICA. JICA has long been involved in capacity building in  BIS Review 4/2010  1  the African continent, and we look forward to collaborating in the future in this area of building more inclusive financial systems. The Malaysian experience on the financial inclusion agenda In Malaysia, the commitment to the financial inclusion agenda is reflected in the new Central Bank of Malaysia Act 2009 which incorporates financial inclusion as an objective of the Central Bank. With the enactment of the Act in November of 2009, the Central Bank has imbedded in the legislation the financial inclusion agenda to ensure that future generation of central bankers will continue to direct efforts to building an inclusive financial system. Additionally, the Central Bank in the process of formulating a new blue print for the financial sector for the next decade. This blueprint would also ensure the development of a more inclusive financial system. The results of the financial inclusion measures thus far have shown positive results.