The representatives of the microfinance organizations and financial institutions gathered today in the Tbilisi Marriott Hotel. The microfinance sector development issues, existing problems and the ways of solving them were discussed at the conference organized by the National Bank of Georgia.

Giorgi Kadagidze, Governor of the NBG opened the conference.

“The primary objective of today’s conference is to discuss in detail the current situation in the microfinance sector, problems, especially from perspective of consumers’ protection. The microfinance sphere is one of the most growing directions in financial sector. Despite the fact that the acting regulation does not allow the NBG to regulate the microfinance organizations, we will carry out all the necessary activities in accordance with our mandate, in order to reduce as much as possible the future potential risks that customers will encounter. First and foremost, we will oblige the microfinance organizations to standardize agreements and place the all-important items of the agreement on its very first page in order to make it easier to understand, and to make transparent the part of financial costs of the product. At the same time we ask the citizens to take more interest in those to whom they entrust their finances and to read the agreement more carefully and to evaluate anticipated risks” – stated the Governor of the NBG.

More than 100 representatives of 67 microfinance organizations attended the conference. The NBG specialists introduced the international experience of sector regulation to the conference participants. The representative of the World Bank, Anzhela Prigozhina introduced the international financial institutions’ assessments and recommendations on the functioning of microfinance sector and its regulation framework.

The association of the microfinance organizations developed the ethics code which reflects the core standards of the relationship between the microfinance organizations and clients. Chairman of the Association, Archil Bakuradze spoke about the code.

The National Bank of Georgia regularly holds the meetings with the representatives of the microfinance organizations. At the previous meeting which was held in May, 2013 at the NBG, was discussed a step taken by the NBG from the consumers’ protection perspective, namely, the normative act developed by the NBG, according to which the commission fee for loan refinancing is limited to 2% for the microfinance organizations, similar to the commercial banks.