Some 90 per cent of Angolans have no access to bank services and products, the governor of the Angola Reserve Bank (BNA), Abraao Gourgel, said on Thursday.
“This estimate shows the existing potential and challenges BNA, commercial banks and other operators have to face for the population to participate in the growth of Angola’s financial and economic growth,” he said at the opening of the workshop in Luanda on Financial Education.
According to Gourgel, BNA, aware of the current deficit of poor banking activity and knowledge of the enormous advantages in financial transactions through banks, will seek to reverse the situation through encouraging the population to join the banking system, through awareness campaigns, workshops, seminars, talks in schools and communities.
According to him, the more the populations know the banking phenomenon, the least will be the effort of the bank to promote the access to certain services, like credit and financial investment, which are crucial for the country’s economic growth and development.
This, he added, required the involvement of all agents in the country because it represented a challenge everyone should take in order to increase the financial flow and modernise the infrastructures and services of the national banking system.
Gourgel said the modernisation and strengthening of the national financial system was also associated with the promotion by the reserve bank of regional and sectoral banking products and services capable of supporting the small and medium scale businesses.
He said education on the advantages of banking was one of the ways through which the populations can be involved in the culture of savings and enhancement of their revenues.
“A successful financial education programme is a good indirect catalyst for the country’s economic growth; it is a way of informing and urging the population to join the banking services, making them change their attitude to choices,” Gourgel stressed.
