VICE-PRESIDENT Samia Suluhu Hassan has touted the need to increase women’s financial inclusion as way to address women problems particularly lifting them from abject poverty.
“Female in-built attributes like low
education, low ownership to assets and lack of decision making powers in
households especially on issues related to finance, deprive their
ability to access and use modern financial services,” she said.
Vice-President made the remarks in Dar
es Salaam during the high level conference on women and financial
inclusion organised jointly by Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI)
and Bank of Tanzania (BoT).
Even with the widespread use of mobile
money, women are more on the receiving than sending end of mobile money,
the situation that partly explains the dependency and poverty level,
she said.
According to 2014 Financial Capability
Survey, over 60 per cent of women particularly in the rural areas are
less informed of money matters. Practically, women have mostly relied on
informal financial service providers like informal groups, friends and
relatives.
“This requires a need for much deeper
analysis of gender disaggregated statistics in financial services for
adequate intervention to address the gap,” she said.
She commended AFI for the ongoing
efforts to improve financial inclusion among women. It is high time that
special attention be given to women to enable them exploit potentials
hidden in them for faster economic growth and poverty alleviation.
On his part, the BoT Governor, Prof
Benno Ndulu, said bringing closer access to financial services,
particularly to women has been of top priorities. And there are ongoing
efforts geared at making more women benefit from the fast growing
financial sector.
He said BoT has partnered with AFI in
ensuring that financial inclusion is promoted especially for more women
having accessibility to various financial products with an ultimate goal
of lifting them from abject poverty.
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