Malawi Improving In Financial Sector Activities­- RBM

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 27^th October will end on Friday 31^st 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.