Discussion with State Minister for Microfinance
On 14th of December 2020, LMFPA had the opportunity of meeting with Mr. Shehan Semasinghe, State Minister of Samurdhi, Household Economy, Microfinance, Self Employment, Business Development & Underutilized State Resources Development in Colombo. Minister Semasinghe is the subject minister for Microfinance and he is the first-ever Minister appointed for Microfinance under the Ministry of Finance. The main objective of this meeting was to address the issues faced by the microfinance industry especially under the backdrop of overcoming the COVID 19 pandemic. During this meeting, it was also identified that there had not been a proper study on the number of lending institutions in the country as there are still a large contingent of institutions that do not fall under the purview of the Microfinance Act due to various reasons such as Core capital inadequacy, and being credit only institutions. The present Microfinance Act which mainly focuses on regulating deposit taking institutions has created a vacuum in excluding institutions that are only into microcredit. The LMFPA proposed to undertake the task of enumerating unregulated MFIs and sought the support of the minister for same.
