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Report: 100 Million Adults Don’t Have Access to Financial Services in Pakistan
A World Bank report issued from Washington says about 100 million adults in Pakistan do not have access to formal and regulated financial services. This number accounts for about five per cent of the world’s unbanked population which stands at two billion.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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Egyptian Government and Visa Sign Agreement to Help Bring Electronic Payments to Government Subsidies
The Egyptian government, represented by the Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade and the Ministry of Planning, this week signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Visa Inc., to enable electronic payment of government subsidies to 22 million Egyptian families.
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- Technology
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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Viewpoint: How Mobile Banking Can Protect Refugees
“Mean spirited”, “inhumane” and desecrating the spirit of the Refugee Convention are some of the milder criticisms levelled at Denmark’s harsh new asylum laws, passed last week. Among new measures is a decision to strip new arrivals of any cash and valuables worth more than 10,000 kroner (US$1,450), purportedly to pay for their upkeep. Switzerland and some southern German states have introduced similar policies.
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- Technology
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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New IFC Report Examines Challenges to Microfinance in the Arab World
A new study from IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, has found that external risks, security concerns, and over-indebtedness are perceived as the most serious challenges facing the microfinance sector in the Arab World.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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Curing Hepatitis C, in an Experiment the Size of Egypt
Abdel Gawad Ellabbad knows exactly how he was infected with hepatitis C. As a schoolboy in this Nile Delta rice-farming village, his class marched to the local clinic every month for injections against schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease spread by water snails.
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- Health Care
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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Solar Solution for Saltwater Stress
MENA is the most water-stressed region in the world. The top sixteen countries in the world facing shortages of renewable water supplies are those between Morocco and Oman, according to 2011 data from risk advisory firm MapleCroft.
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- Environment
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
- Tags
- social enterprise, solar
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The Dream: 90 percent vaccination rate in Pakistan
Neither red tape nor Taliban has deterred Noor Rakhshani from working on a vaccine problem in her Pakistani homeland.
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- Health Care
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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- vaccines
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New GSMA Study Emphasises Importance of Digital Commerce, Access and Payments for Growth in Pakistan
A new research report produced by the GSMA, ‘Building digital societies in Asia: Making commerce smarter’, indicates that for Pakistan to harness the full potential of digital commerce, strong collaboration is required among mobile operators, financial and payments companies and governmental agencies. Each of these stakeholders have a crucial role to play in enabling digital commerce, digital access and digital payments.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
- Tags
- digital payments