GHANA:Government misses 2017 deadline for financial inclusion

Government has failed to meet its deadline for its key policies aimed at ensuring financial inclusion.

The three; mobile money interoperability, national Identification system and Digital address system were key upon assumption of office of the NPP administration.

But after chalking a year into their administration, the government has announced that it has postponed the implementation of at least two of the policies to next year (2018).

The NPP government’s aim of driving financial inclusion is largely to increase the percentage of the banked population.

Currently, over 70 percent of Ghanaians are said to be without bank accounts.

A situation, the government had hoped to reverse at least by the end of the first year in office.

Dr. Bawumia, at the National Policy Summit reiterated efforts to meet the November deadline for mobile money interoperability.

The mandate, which lies with the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), came after a botched agreement with Sibton Switch systems which had agreed to deliver the service for some 4.6 billion cedis.

But almost a month after the November deadline, indications are that the GhIPSS will roll out the policy from next year.

In October this year however, President Akufo Addo launched the digital property addressing system developed by Ghanaian IT Firm Vokacom.

The $ 2.5 million software is expected to aid in identifying persons by financial institutions to track clients and improve loan recovery.

“Over the years, we have been accustomed to using landmarks as a means of giving directions…we are launching a solution to our location and addressing problems and this will ultimately change the way of doing business,” President Akufo stressed at the launch.

After launching the National Identification system, the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia last week in Kumasi rather explained that the issuing of the cards will commence in January next year.

“If you are going to include everybody, you need to identify everybody and this is why we are going to issue the National ID cards, the work has been done and by the grace of God by next year, we should be issuing the national ID cards,” he stated.

SOURCE:GHANAWEB