Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Monday that microfinance is an effective way to reduce poverty, unemployment and create more job opportunities at the 2012 international microfinance conference ( IMC).

The two-day event with the theme "Towards Sustainability and Financial Inclusion" was hosted by Indonesia's Ministry of Cooperatives and Small Medium Enterprises and is participated by 420 businesspeople, policymakers and scholars from 23 countries.

"It is not easy to handle unemployment and poverty, especially when the global economic crisis is still going on, access to banking for the poor people is very difficult, we need to facilitate them," the President said.

According to the president, Indonesia has achieved much progress in the microfinance field through people's entrepreneurship credit (KUR) launched in 2007, with 7 million borrowers and $9.5 billion disbursement, and Non- performance load (NPL) is also very low compared with the conventional bank.

Today KUR is one of the Indonesia banks' favorite products. According to data from state-controlled lender Bank Rakyat Indonesia, more than 70,000 microfinance institutions have been helping micro-businesses, which have provided jobs to millions of people and stimulate domestic spending.

"As the effective way for us to cooperate, microfinance is not the final mission. The final mission is we want to advance the micro small and medium enterprises through this mechanism, empower the local community, bring prosperity for all the people," Yudhoyono added.