YANGON: A World Bank development lender said Wednesday it would provide $2 million for a new microfinance bank that aims to help small businesses in impoverished Myanmar.
International Finance Corporation (IFC) said in a statement that the loan would be its first investment in the country also known as Burma, which is wooing foreign donors as it emerges from decades of military rule.
It said it would work with German and French partners, as well as Cambodia's ACLEDA Bank, to help the micro-lender -- to be called ACLEDA MFI Myanmar -- begin operations this year.
IFC said Myanmar's banking sector was one of the world's most underdeveloped financial services industries "as a result of the country's decades of isolation".
"Our investment in a microfinance institution is a good start to our support for Myanmar's economic reforms in order to improve access to finance, create more jobs and reduce poverty for its people," said IFC East Asia and the Pacific director Sergio Pimenta.
Microfinance initiatives, which provide small, low-cost loans to the poor, are seen by experts as a way to help alleviate poverty in Myanmar, one of the world's least-developed countries.
The World Bank said in November that it would inject $245 million of aid into Myanmar to support its reform drive, resuming assistance for the former pariah nation after a quarter-century absence. (AFP)
