Mohamed S Fofana: Benefits of microfinance in Sierra Leone Speech by Mr Mohamed S Fofana, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, at the Official Opening Ceremony of the ProCredit Bank (SL) Limited, Freetown, 1 February 2008. *  *  *  Madam Chairperson Ministers of Government Members of the Diplomatic Corps Members of the Board of Directors, Senior Management and Staff of the ProCredit Bank (SL) Limited Heads of Banks and other Financial Institutions Colleagues from the Fourth Estate Distinguished Ladies & Gentlemen: I am happy to be here this afternoon to address this distinguished audience on the official opening ceremony of the ProCredit Bank (SL) Limited. The Bank of Sierra Leone issued a licence to ProCredit Bank (SL) Limited to conduct banking business in Sierra Leone on 1st August, 2007, and the bank opened its doors on 3 August 2007. Its activities, since that time, have been largely focused on microfinance promotion; taking deposits from and giving credits to small businesses. This is an important mile-stone in Sierra Leone’s poverty reduction drive, which is consistent with Government’s desire to make the microfinance sub sector of the financial industry viable and responsive to the needs of the vast majority of Sierra Leoneans. Madam Chair, Distinguished Guests, the benefits of microfinance are numerous and well documented, especially as they relate to a country’s effort in reducing poverty. I cannot go through all such benefits this afternoon. I will however attempt to highlight a few.
The new information leads us to estimate that global growth will fall short of expectations, because of both downward corrections to projected activity in the developed world and a major adjustment in Latin America, which is headed to a contraction in 2016. At the same time, the external financial conditions relevant for Chile are estimated to be tighter, while the terms of trade will be lower (figure 2 and table 1). BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  The downscaling in output projections for 2016 is consistent with the lower base at the end of 2015, and with spot indicators suggesting that consumption and investment have remained weak this year to date. On the consumption side, in the last two years the real wage bill has been outgrowing private consumption, leading us to expect a somewhat stronger recovery of the latter during this year. This has not happened, however, which together with the sharper deterioration of the labor market in recent months, plus consumers’ expectations remaining pessimistic and low levels of imports of consumer goods in the first months of the year, mean that this component of growth has to be revised downward. However, by 2017 some recovery of this variable is expected, thanks to a gradual improvement in its fundamentals, particularly, moderate growth in the wage bill and a slight improvement in consumer expectations. Investment, on the other hand, has seen a significant adjustment in recent years, due primarily to the end of the mining investment cycle (figure 3).