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Government has started executing an initiative to help accelerate rural financial inclusion by promoting the use of existing public infrastructure in the rural area.
This initiative will allow the provision of financial services by the financial service providers (FSPs) to use existing public infrastructure in rural areas to deliver financial services.
This is being implemented by the Bank of Zambia (BoZ), Ministry of Finance and National Planning as well as Ministry of Health.
The Ministry of Finance and National Planning, BoZ, and Ministry of Health conducted a joint inspection exercise of rural health facilities that can be used by FSPs in districts identified as lacking financial access points.
So far, the Ministry of Health has opened its doors to accommodate FSPs that would be willing to use their facilities in identified rural districts.
This is according to the latest Zambanker, a BoZ journal released on Friday by the Central Bank in Lusaka.
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According to the journal, the three institutions would provide the regulatory support and guidance to facilitate for FSPs to tap into this marginalised rural segment.
BoZ Director Non-Bank Financial Institutions Supervision Department, Freda Tamba, said the lack of infrastructure had hindered the outreach of FSPs in rural areas.
Tamba said this included the spread of their agency networks, availability of automated teller machines (ATMs) and point of sale (PoS) terminals.
“It is from this backdrop that the BoZ and Ministry of Finance and National Planning commenced the initiative to help accelerate rural financial inclusion by promoting the use of already existing public infrastructure in rural areas for the provision of financial services by FSPs.
“We thank and commend the Ministry of Health for opening their doors to accommodate FSPs that would be willing to use their facilities in the identified rural districts for the provision of financial services,” she said.
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Government recently launched an Inspection Report on the use of general Access Points for the Provision of Financial Services.
Tamba said the findings of the inspections exercise also indicated that although Digital Financial Services (DFS), particularly mobile money was accelerating uptake of formal financial service among the excluded adults.
She regretted that the rate of uptake in some of the districts was low due to inadequate infrastructure.
“In cases where mobile money agents were available, the service tended to be very poor due to issues of inadequate cash holdings [float].
“The Central Bank is hopeful that the findings of the inspections report will generate interest and encourage FSPs to extend their outreach into these identified rural health centres,” she said.
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