El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele talks about bitcoin with central banks and financial entities from 44 countries

Eight months after declaring bitcoin legal tender, Bukele will show the economic impact of the pioneering cryptocurrency in the nation he leads.

The meeting will be attended by central bank and government officials from several developing nations. Nigeria, Egypt, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Paraguay, Angola, Guinea, and Madagascar are some of the countries that will send representation. This is according to the list of participants that President Nayib Bukele has published on Twitter.

The 44 countries come from the African, Asian, and South American continents. There are no representatives from Europe, North America, or Oceania. This is because the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) organized the event. The AFI is an organization that promotes the use of financial services to include the unbanked population.

The event will be held until May 19 and “is aligned with the National Financial Inclusion Policy recently launched by El Salvador, with digitization and access to financing for small businesses as a priority.”  This is as reported by the Central Bank of the Central American country.

President Nayib Bukele and his bitcoin-based programs for El Salvador

At the beginning of the year, the government of El Salvador launched a program based on bitcoin to provide financing to small and medium-sized companies in the country.

As CriptoNoticias reported at the time, micro and small companies with bitcoin funds can access loans to cover their liquidity needs or promote new projects that require investment.

To do this, the National Commission for Micro and Small Businesses (Conamype ) of El Salvador joined the decentralized finance protocol (DEFI), Acumen, to grant loans in bitcoin at low-interest rates with the idea of favoring autonomous workers.

The scope of the Conamype program is scheduled to be one of the topics discussed at the conference with visitors from 44 countries. This, taking into account that President Nayib Bukele will speak about financial inclusion, the digital economy, and the benefits that El Salvador has enjoyed after adopting bitcoin as legal tender, as he pointed out on Twitter.

Although Bukele will focus on financial inclusion based on bitcoin, a study that was published last month by the National Office of Economic Research indicates that bitcoin has had little impact in El Salvador. This is the case because more than 70% of the population is still unbanked. In addition, this is because most prefer to pay for their services and purchases with cash.

In addition, this is not the only difficulty that the government of President Nayib Bukele has faced in the last eight months. During this period, the president received warnings about using bitcoin in El Salvador from the IMF and has had to delay the issuance of the so-called Salvadoran Volcano Bonds.