San Diego, California—July 04, 2016—Esri, a world leader in geographic information system (GIS) technology, presented Palestine Monetary Authority with a Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award June 29th at their annual User Conference. Selected from over 300,000 eligible candidates, Palestine Monetary Authority received the award for its innovative application of technology, data collection, geospatial information visualization, and thought leadership through GIS in the field of Central Banking.

H.E. Governor of PMA Mr Azzam shawwa, was pleased with this success which confirms the ongoing developments in the regulatory and monetary systems, which also contributes to the development of the banking sector in Palestine.

“The SAG Awards serve a great purpose,” said Esri founder and President Jack Dangermond. “A Special Achievement in GIS Award recognizes best practices for organizations implementing technology to change the world. Highlighting good work benefits the entire GIS community and that’s very valuable.”

The implementation of the GIS helped streamline the process required to advice private banks into branching out to neglected cities and viliges in the country where such services enhances the market pentration of private banks and also contributes to achieving the financial inclusion strategy. GIS has also enabled monitoring the cash at bank brances and advise on redestibution of such excess to head quarters and other financial insitutions. The GIS implementation reduced the required time of desk research and analysis, thus speeded up the decision making process. It enabled the Palestine Monetary Authority make the right decision in the right time.

“The Palestine Monetary Authority is Honord to recive the SAG Award” said Ragheb Budeiri Director of the Development Projects Office. “The GIS implemenatation was one of those visionary projects envisioned by our Governor. A mission that was successfully accomplished that resulted in starting a second phase of expanding its use to cover end users, and advising banks on ATM distribution across te country.”

Palestine Monetary Authority was one of 167 organizations in fields such as agriculture, defense, transportation, non-profit, telecommunications, central banking regulators, and state and local government to receive a SAG Award. Esri staff nominate thousands of candidates annually from around the world for consideration and company President Dangermond selects the finalists.

“SAG winners are diverse in their geographical representation by design,” Dangermond said. “We purposely focus on the different regions of the world because we’re looking for best practices of GIS in different cultures and different geographies.”

For more information on how Palestine Monetary Authority is innovating through the application of GIS, visit www.pma.ps.

The Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) is an independent public institution responsible for the formulation and implementation of monetary policies and banking policies, to safeguard the banking sector and ensure the growth of the national economy in a balanced manner. PMA aims to maintain monetary and financial stability and promote sustainable economic growth through the following:

• Effective and transparent regulation and supervision of banks, specialized lending institutions

and money changers operating in Palestine.

• Overseeing the implementation and operation of modern, efficient payment systems.

About Esri

Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS technology, Esri software is used in more than 350,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at esri.com/news.

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