Rwanda: ‘Ensuring Universal Access to Financial Services Key Priority’

Friday, October 18, 2013

Increasing access to financial services is one of the Government’s priorities as Rwanda looks to ensure a self-reliant populace, John Rwangombwa, the central bank governor, has said.

“Rwanda’s vision is to ensure financial inclusion, especially for the rural masses. In fact, we have made significant progress towards this target. So far, we have been able to double formal financial inclusion from 21 per cent of adults in 2008 to 42 per cent as at the end of last year,” Rwangombwa noted.

Rwangombwa was reacting to the call on governments to enhance financial inclusion to end global poverty at the recent World Leaders Forum in Washington, USA.

According to the leaders at the forum, most small businesses in emerging markets have no access to finance, which hinders their growth and ability to generate the much-needed new jobs.

They also noted that the majority of the 2.5 billion adults globally are ’unbanked’, while close to 200 million micro-to-medium enterprises in developing economies lack access to affordable financial services and credit, and often use informal methods to save, borrow and secure their assets.

“This undermines efforts to reduce poverty levels worldwide,” the global leaders noted.

Source: The New Times - allAfrica (link opens in a new window)

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