Guatemala solon visits RBAP-MABS

MANILA, Philippines - Guatemala congresswoman Roxana Baldetti has interacted with the Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines (RBAP) last month to better understand how the mobile phone banking initiative through the rural banks has worked out in the Philippines, particularly in reaching out to more remote areas. Guatemala is a country with a population of about 13.8 million – over 75 percent of which live below the poverty line. Poverty is even more severe among the rural and indigenous populations. Baldetti played a key role in the approval of a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program in Guatemala. The social benefits cash grants would be distributed electronically as mobile money by Claro Americas, with the funds to be managed by Banco de Desarrollo Rural. The USAID-supported RBAP-Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (MABS) Program enabled 68 rural banks with over 1,000 branch units to offer mobile phone banking services to amounting to P4-billion transactions. Using mobile phone banking, rural banks are active participants in the disbursement of CCT to the beneficiaries of the Panta-wid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).