Tanzania Daily News (Dar es Salaam)
8 December 2011
AS Tanzania celebrates her 50 years of independence today, the country still faces challenges in the banking sector necessitating rapid expansion to provide services to more people as population grows rapidly.
Tanzania Bankers’ Association (TBA) Chairman, Lawrence Mafuru said in Dar es Salaam on Thursday that soon after independence of Tanganyika on December 9, 1961, there was only one bank-NBC- serving the nation but since then more financial institutions have come in.
The history of nation shows that banks have contributed a lot to the development where NBC is not only the leading financial service provider in the country but also it has contributed in construction of roads and industries in the country.
Mr Mafuru who is also NBC Managing Director, said the banking sector is still contributing in the national development since then where he cited NBC’s new policy of helping with education and health sectors with focus on special groups such as the disabled people.
“We are providing education and health because these are very important to the society” he added.
He said as we mark 50 years of independence, the country has witnessed a lot of financial success compared to previous years where the bank services were provided by only one bank in the country and the services were not covering the whole country.
“Early next year we are going to mark anniversary of 45 years for our bank, we are proud of a lot of success in provision of financial services where now we have 53 branches computerized bank system and we have provided more that 1,500 permanent employment” Mafuru noted.
Although Tanzania is still marked as the Least Development Country (LDC) in international statistics but still the country has a lot done in financial sector, he underscored.
Mafuru said although bank services have increased in the country where currently there is almost 45 banks but still there is deficiency in financial services because the current banks serves only 10 percent of the population.
Meanwhile, Mafuru said NBC as the major development stakeholder in the country, is currently collaborating with National Housing Corporation (NHC) in the programme of ensuring local clients get mortgage financing to acquire better homes.
In terms of challenges, Mafuru said, “The main challenge in our country is skills and professionalism to workers where indeed innovation is needed so that they can compete internationally, academically we don’t have great challenge”.
He said in this country most investors are from abroad and always what they need is high skills and professionalism where in some extent our people don’t have, this makes most of us to fear the coming East African Community that most of our people will never get jobs but only what is needed is only skills and professionalism.
Mafuru said there is no worry about academic matters in the country. However, in case of telecommunications companies to engage in financial services he said that the services will not discourage people to use bank services since the needs of banks services are still high in the country.
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