Government Signs Memorandum of Intent with Italian Microcredit Organization

Government Signs Memorandum of Intent with Italian Microcredit Organization
Santo Domingo, 12/02/2010

On Wednesday, the Dominican government and the Permanent Italian National Committee for Microcredit signed a memorandum of intent with the goal of strengthening microcredit and micro-financing, fundamental factors for achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

The agreement sustains that a consulting group will be formed, comprised of representatives of each one of the signatories. The group will promote the undertaking of the individualized activities as stated in the agreement.

The agreement, which includes the Dominican Republic and Haiti, was signed by Dominican Minister of Industry and Commerce, José Ramón Fadul and Mario Baccini from the Italian National Commission for Microcredit.

In the agreement, the Italian organization places its experience at the service of the Dominican state in the form of financial services, according to a press release from the Presidential Office of Information, Press and Publicity.

This organization, through the agreement which will be renewed every two years, will be able to assist the Dominican authorities in the definition and realization of microfinance credit programs, payments, collection of earnings, pledges and assurances, among other things.

The Italian National Commission will do a specific study in Dominican territory. For this research, the government will point out to the Italian organization the territorial areas of intervention, marketing categories and the identification of beneficiaries who would be involved in the microcredit projects.
In exchange, the Dominican authorities will show the Italian Commission civil society organizations that eventually should substitute the counterparts with which the Italian Commission will be able to create associations and manage the projects.  

The Dominican government will make available the necessary financing to constitute the guarantee of funds to assure partial coverage of the risk facing the Banking Institute, which will be industrialized and will materially distribute financing to cover the costs of managing future microcredit projects.   

The agreement sustains that a consulting group will be formed, comprised of representatives of each one of the signatories. The group will promote the undertaking of the individualized activities as stated in the agreement.

This group must provide follow-up to the specific indications that are decided upon by the institutions and will write up a report every six months on the progress of the activities.