Tanzania Launches Financial Inclusion Framework to Foster Economic Development

By Xinhua 

August 4, 2023

Tanzanian Vice President Philip Mpango on Thursday launched the 2023-2028 Financial Inclusion Framework, saying financial inclusion is among the important drivers of socioeconomic development.

Launching the framework on behalf of President Samia Suluhu Hassan in the economic hub of Dar es Salaam, Mpango said financial inclusion was key to integrating the unbanked into the formal economy.

“Financial inclusion helps to alleviate poverty, make the poor less vulnerable to financial shocks, broaden the tax base, stimulates public spending and raise living standards for all,” he said.

Mpango said in Tanzania, financial inclusion was among the top priorities of its reform agenda and constituted a key objective of the National Development Vision 2025 as well as the National Five-Year Development Plan (2021/2022 – 2025/2026).

He said the implementation of the Second Financial Inclusion Framework that ended in 2022 recorded good results, with greater evolution of access to finance by Tanzanians. According to FinScope Tanzania Survey 2023, the adult population using banking services increased from 16.7 percent in 2017 to 22.2 percent in 2023, aiming to attain 33 percent by 2025/2026.

Overall, the survey showed that the use of formal financial services among adults (aged 16 and above) has increased to 76 percent in 2023 from 65.3 percent in 2017, with the gap between men and women narrowing to 3 percent in 2023, compared to 10 percent in 2010, said Mpango.

FinScope Tanzania is a comprehensive financial sector demand-side survey of Tanzanian adults aged 16 years and above. It provides an understanding of the financial services uptake landscape across the country and is a reliable measure of demand and usage of financial services across various population segments.