Nairobi — The World Bank wants the Government to accelerate the deregulation of the local telecommunications sector.

This, the bank said, will speed up the growth of Information Technology (IT) in the country.

The bank expressed concern that though efforts had been made towards the liberalisation of the sector, they had not gone far enough to achieve IT levels that could have a more profound impact on the economy.

"The vision of the World Bank is to see greater investment in e-commerce and e-government as a means of poverty reduction and improving economic growth," the bank's Country Director, Makhtar Diop, said yesterday.

He said fundamental policy reforms were necessary to create an enabling environment for intensifying technological advances in the private and public sectors.

"Kenya, and many of the developing countries, should invest more in IT to optimise the benefits of global advances in this field," he said while opening an African Banking and Financial Technology Forum at a Nairobi hotel.

Diop also launched a new Financial Institutions Directory of East Africa and the Republic of Rwanda.

The continent's sluggish e-commerce development has been partially blamed on the banking sector's slow adoption of internet-based technologies and ignorance of the enhanced attendant services and efficiencies.

Diop noted for instance that though the local financial industry had come along way as far as technological advancement is concerned, its growth and efficiency was still being impeded by the slow liberalisation of the telecommunication sector.

He noted that despite the efforts, only two banks have a country-wide network of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) with a handful of others having very few in Nairobi and other major towns.

Only two banks, said Diop, are licensed to operate the satellite-based VSAT technology for data transfer. He said this had led to a situation where all other banks rely on the national telephone provider, whose systems are not efficient for a modern economy.

Diop also observed that the telecommunications sector was still largely controlled by the State monopoly, Telkom, making Internet providers not able to attain the economies of scale necessary to achieve an efficient network of internet services.