By David Falconer
Three years into its introduction the local Credit Bureau seems set to reshape the country’s financial landscape, more particularly, to forever alter the procedures associated with lending.
On this the third anniversary of this service to the local market it is apposite to reflect on the evolution of the service and on the place that it currently occupies in the financial services system.
The Private Sector Assessment Programme of 2006, the National Competitiveness Strategy 2006 and the National Economic Summit of 2007 had all, in their respective ways, underscored the importance of enhancing the country’s financial environment in order to expand the private sector investment and export development landscape. Critically, these developments had laid bare the constraints confronting commerce arising out of the lack of access to financing, particularly for the micro, small and medium-scale enterprises, categories of business which comprise more than 90 per cent of the local private sector.
