The European Union has stressed the importance of cooperation with the Arab Gulf Development Program (AGFUND) under prince Talal bin Abdel Aziz to establish more banks for the poor in the least-developed countries, to serve the poor and the refugees to be similar to the banks which had been founded in nine developing countries.

This came during a meeting between Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations and AGFUND executive director Nasser al Qahtani in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

The two sides also stressed the importance of reaching an initial agreement to cooperate in the fields of vocational training with the Arab Open University which had been established by AGFUND and had eight branches in Arab states.

Qahtani told MENA through an email that the European Union's welcome of prince Talal initiative and the experiment in establishing such banks reflects the seriousness of the prince on promoting his development and humanitarian initiatives to help the poor.

The Initiative of creating banks for the poor adopted by Talal has achieved remarkable works that considered of great value on the human development level. With the beginning of the third millennium, AGFUND has steadily initiated in implementing the initiative of Prince Talal to establish banks for the poor, through disseminating Microfinance culture. AGFUND’s involvement in Microfinance goes back to 1997, when Prince Talal valued the thoughts and ideas of Prof / MuhammedYunus, founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and leader of Microfinance around the Globe. His Royal Highness had introduced this idea to the Arab world and launched his initiative in establishing banks for the poor in the developing countries to improve their living conditions of this category and turn them into an independent, productive and supporting force.

Therefore, due to the continuous success and accomplishments, AGFUND would like to expand its initiative to include Mauritania, Tunisia, The Philippines, Senegal and Morocco through establishing some form of partnerships with the Public and/or Private sector of those countries., said AGFUND on its website.

Source: MENA