28 January 2008
Maputo — Despite the optimism displayed by Ernesto Gove, governor of the Bank of Mozambique, that the country's commercial banks, are now prepared to take seriously the opening of branches outside of the main cities, the statistics tell a different story.
According to figures published last week, during a session of the Consultative Council of the Bank of Mozambique, the central bank authorized the opening of 46 new branches of commercial banks in 2007. This brought the total number of branches up from 228 to 274.
But 25 of the new branches were in Maputo and the neighbouring city of Matola. The two cities between them still account for over 50 per cent of all banks in the country. A further three of the new branches were in the country's second largest city, Beira, and two in the third largest, Nampula.
Just two branches were opened in districts that had not previously enjoyed banking services - Moamba, in Maputo province, and Meconta, in Nampula province. One bank opened a mobile branch which covered three districts (Gondola and Barue in Manica province, and Nhamatanda in Sofala) which had not previously had banks.
This allowed the central bank to announce that the number of districts with banks and risen from 28 to 33. Since the country has 128 districts, this means that 95 of them still have no banks.
Although about 40 per cent of the population lives in Nampula and Zambezia, these two provinces between them have just 32 bank branches (11.7 per cent of the total). The worst served provinces are in the far north. Cabo Delgado has just eight banks (2.9 per cent of the total), and Niassa only four (1.5 per cent).
There was, however, an expansion of micro-finance in 2007. The central bank authorized the opening of three new micro-banks - one in Maputo, one in the Niassa provincial capital, Lichinga, and one in the small town of Catandica in Manica. None of these new institutions have yet started operations.
14 new micro-credit operators were authorized, nine of them in Maputo city and province. There are now 71 micro-finance operators, but 53 of them (75 per cent) are in Maputo city and province. Most provinces have just one micro-finance operators, and Niassa has none at all.
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