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214263

Financial Inclusion in Egypt: Challengers and Recommendations

Article

Last updated: 05 Jan 2025

Subjects

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Tags

Economic topics.
Legal, economic, and statistical research in Arabic, English, and French.

Abstract

Financial inclusion is receiving an increased attention for its potential beneficial financial and economic impacts. It can enhance financial stability, promote economic growth, reduce income inequality and alleviate poverty. Driven by the Egyptian authorities' trust in the importance of the inclusion of all society segments into the formal financial system, they made several efforts and adopted different measures. Despite these efforts, challenges remain and necessitate further efforts to be undertaken to confront persistent modest levels of financial inclusion. This study aims to demonstrate the currently expanding Egyptian experience of financial inclusion, the governmental efforts to effectively boost it and the challenges that are still encountered. The study finds that Egypt suffers from high levels of financial exclusion, especially when compared to other countries groups. Analysis of the access, usage and quality of financial services used by individuals or enterprises clarified that many Egyptians are still excluded from the formal financial system in many aspects. Cost, lack of documentation and distance barriers play considerable roles in this financial exclusion. Women, low-income and young adults are over-represented among the unbanked. There is greater preference of cash transactions in receiving wages, sending or receiving domestic remittances and saving / borrowing informally. Mobile money accounts and digital transactions are recording low levels. Possibility of raising emergency funds is faint. Also, firms' access to finance and usage indicators in Egypt didn't improve significantly over the past years. To face these challenges, the study recommends actual steps to expand electronic banking and mobile money services, to revolutionize post offices, and to remove physical, bureaucratic, and financial barriers hindering financial inclusion. Interest rates and collateral requirements need to be revised to ameliorate firms' access to finance. A bank's collateral regime, ready to accept a growing share of movable assets, is important. Finally, a financial inclusion strategy with specific targets need to be settled and adopted

DOI

10.21608/espesl.2020.214263

Keywords

الشمول المالي, مصر, الخدمات المالية, الاستقرار المالي, financial inclusion, Egypt, Africa, Financial Services, Financial stability

Authors

First Name

heba

Last Name

Mahmoud el Baz

MiddleName

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Affiliation

assistant professor of economics and chief of fiscal and monetary policies department, institute of national planning (INP) Egypt

Email

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City

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Orcid

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Volume

111

Article Issue

538

Related Issue

30107

Issue Date

2020-07-01

Receive Date

2022-01-15

Publish Date

2020-07-01

Page Start

520

Page End

577

Print ISSN

0013-239X

Online ISSN

2812-5606

Link

https://espesl.journals.ekb.eg/article_214263.html

Detail API

https://espesl.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=214263

Order

11

Type

Original Article

Type Code

2,208

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

L' Egypte Contemporaine

Publication Link

https://espesl.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Financial Inclusion in Egypt: Challengers and Recommendations

Details

Type

Article

Created At

23 Jan 2023