The
Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) says over the last ten years, the demand and use of
various financial services has continued to register an encouraging upward
movement. This is because, a lot of people living in both urban and rural areas
have started to practice a saving culture and are engaging themselves in various
financial activities.
RBM’s
Deputy Governor responsible for Supervision Dr. Grant Kabango said this as Malawi
begins 2014 National Financial Literacy Week being commemorated under the theme
‘Financial Literacy: Building a Financially Literate Nation’. And the week has
been launched on Monday at Community ground in Lilongwe.
According to Kabango, this is an exciting development to the Central bank as the trend is enormously improving the country’s economic growth and the growth of the financial sector as well.
Kabango
has attributed this increased demand and use of financial services to more awareness
messages on the importance of saving through various financial institutions and
the availability of more financial institutions across the country.
He
said the improvement in saving part of the disposable income among many Malawians
has come about due to the increased number of commercial banks that now totals
to 12. This he said “has accorded an opportunity for most people who were never
able to have access to financial institutions in terms of opening account or interacting
with any of the financial institutions”
Because
commercial banks are many, “now people are able to interact and open accounts
with as many financial institutions as we have now, as opposed to the previous arrangement
where we only had two commercial banks,” He said,
On
the availability of various information about financial institution’s and
services, Kabango said, “Most people are becoming financially literate as to
the advantages of engaging themselves with financial institutions, and this has
therefore increased the number of those people that are bankable”
During
the launch of the Financial Literacy Week on Monday, Minister of Finance Goodall
Gondwe shared similar view of Kabango. He said Malawi has done a good job in encouraging
people to start engaging themselves with financial institutions.
He
however urged all the financial institutions operating in the country to intensify
their efforts of rolling out their operations into rural areas in order to
allow many people in villages to access financial services at their door step.
The
Financial Literacy week which has began on Monday 27th October will
end on Friday 31st of October with several activities lined up aiming
at sensitizing the public on issues that surrounds financial services.
The
week gives the general public an opportunity to learn and know available information,
opportunities, and services that are provided by various finance institutions like
banks, insurance and macro insurance companies as well as pension institutions
so that people enter into contract with such institutions with some information.
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