Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Middle East and Central Asia Department Jihad Azour, revealed the need for Arab countries to create more than 28 million jobs over the next seven years.
Azour stressed during a workshop organized by the Arab Monetary Fund in cooperation with the Central Bank of Egypt, that "the main way for Arab countries to provide employment opportunities is to promote and develop the financial inclusion, and target the financing of small and medium enterprises, to allow young people and marginalized and low-income groups to access finance, and increase reliance on financial technology."
"Enhancing financial inclusion and SMEs will help Arab countries increase their economic growth rates by about 3 percent over the next three years, and increase employment by 1 percent annually, which underlines the importance of focusing on financial inclusion," he said.
Azour added: “the financial inclusion should be of great importance to the central banks, which has led the IMF to provide technical support to help the Arab countries provide financing for SMEs, and to help all groups, especially the marginalized groups in rural areas, youth and women, to access Funding for their projects."
Source (Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Edited)
