(AfDB) - The Board of Directors of the African Development Fund, the concessional lending arm of the African Development Bank Group, has approved a $12 million grant to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to implement the Financial Sector Development and Inclusion Support Project in the country.

The funding will support financial sector reforms in the country and improve financial inclusion for rural and vulnerable populations especially women and youth as well as micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.

Specifically, the project will help mobilize long-term resources by supporting the creation of a national development bank and a stock exchange as well as expanding  the market for government securities. It will also encourage financial inclusion by supporting the interoperability of payment services and improving the technical and operational capacity of microfinance institutions and other electronic money issuers.  

Setting up a payment incident center and  strengthening the capacity of payment system regulators and supervisors will bolster the country's financial stability.  Project activities will be carried out with a view to increasing the resilience of the financial sector and reducing poverty in the DRC. 

Nicolas Kazadi Kadima-Nzuji, DRC’s Minister of Finance said the government was "pleased with the approval of this important project by the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank. This project targets key objectives of our action program, namely the creation of a national development bank, the improvement of financial inclusion and the strengthening of the government securities market in the DRC.”

"We are delighted to support the development of financial markets in the Democratic Republic of Congo," said Ahmed Attout, Head of the Capital Markets Development Division of the African Development Bank Group. "This project has a central role in the development of the government securities market. It will provide more liquidity and review some key regulatory frameworks to mobilize long-term resources. The project will also help diversify the sources of financing for Congolese small and medium-sized enterprises and increase financial inclusion in the DRC," he added.