Solomons starts financial inclusion survey

Transcript

Solomon Islands is the second Pacific country to carry out its financial inclusion survey following on from Fiji in November last year.

The Central Bank of Solomon Islands launched the initiative on Monday.

The Bank's Caroline Kanoko told Koroi Hawkins it aims to assess the access, usage and quality of financial services and products in the country.

The survey will take a sample size of 1110 adults randomly selected from different households in rural, urban and maritime areas to ensure a representative sample.

The two month survey results will be presented at a national conference in June in Honiara.

CAROLINE KANOKO: It will survey on the consumer perspective of financial inclusion. Financial inclusion looks at access to financial services, usage of financial services, quality and the impact it has on the people. So this survey, seeing that we will be focusing on the consumer perspective, so we are assessing or surveying the access of financial services to the people by asking the people. And then uses like whether or not they are using the financial product. If they are not using, why they are not using? Is it because of illiteracy or is it because they don't know? So that's uses and quality is when if they have access to it and they are using it, how it impacts on them I mean the quality, whether it's to expensive or whether it's not appropriate for them. So these are the areas around when we call demand side survey.

KOROI HAWKINS: And why are you doing this survey, what are you going to do with the results or the feedback that you get from the users?

CK: Well, in any policy it's always important that you work with data, what you see on the ground, rather than assuming. So our focus is get data, so that it tells the government, even the central bank and even the financial service providers themselves. So that we can really  see what is on the ground. What the people want, what the people are not using or what they would want to use, what they do not understand. So that we can table it to the stakeholders like the government, the central bank, even the private sector.

KH: And you mention this is not only being done in Solomon Islands but elsewhere as well. Where else is it being done and is it a similar sort of thing?

CK: The first is in Fiji, it was late last year, I think in November or December, so Solomon Islands will be the second and after Solomon Islands they will move to Samoa. This survey is part of the Pacific Island regional initiative. So it's a team, it's a working group under central banks of the pacific, on financial inclusion specifically. So this is not a Solomon Islands survey it is a regional kind of survey, because we are on similar development status. So the governors are working together, even the country as well for more financial inclusion.