Apenisa Waqairadovu 
The National Financial Inclusion Taskforce has noted significant strides towards improving financial inclusion.
NFIT Chair, Governor Ariff Ali, says changes align with the current strong performance of the Fijian economy and its favourable growth prospects moving forward.
Ali says NFIT noted that 86.9 percent of adults are financially included, surpassing the short-term NFIS target of reaching 86 percent by 2024.
He adds that the gender gap has narrowed from 11.6 percentage points in 2021 to 10.2 points in 2022, in line with an improvement in women’s financial inclusion from 78.1 percent to 81.7 percent over the same period.
The Governor says the use of digital financial services has exceeded its short-term targets, attributed mainly to the spike in digital payments during the post-COVID-19 period.
He says the share of adults engaging in digital payments, excluding mobile money, grew from 19.3 percent in 2019 to 33.3 percent in 2021 and 38.5 percent in 2022.
He says this substantial growth has outpaced the NFIS short-term target of reaching 34 percent by 2024.
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