Queen Maxima of Netherlands praises financial inclusion in Bangladesh

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands has appreciated the growth of financial inclusion in Bangladesh and expressed her interest to visit the country next year to see the development. The queen expressed her interest in a meeting with Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman at the IMF headquarters in Washington during IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings 2015 on Saturday.

Queen Maxima, also a special adviser to the UN secretary general on financial inclusion, praised the role of Bangladesh Bank in promoting mobile financial services and other inclusive financial activities such as women's empowerment and promotion of agriculture and small and medium enterprises.

On the sidelines of the IMF event on Saturday, the BB chief spoke as a panelist on "Leveraging migration and remittances for post-2015 development financing: the Bangladesh context".

Rahman said the government has launched numerous training and skills development programmes to help the jobseekers get employed in the local and foreign labour markets.

The BB has guided local banks in building up extensive networks of correspondent relationships with banks, he said.

He discussed the banking regulator's plan to link banks and financial institutions with credible national identification system soon.