Malinyi residents advised to use mobile phone banking platforms

What you need to know:

Apart from its Simbanking platform, CRDB is also working with Malinyi Savings and Credit Cooperative Society and with Zidua Waziri Shop as its agents in the district, which residents can make use of.

Dodoma. The deputy Finance and Planning minister, Dr Ashatu Kijaji, has advised residents of Malinyi District in Morogoro to use mobile phone banking platforms as they await commercial banks’ decisions to set up fully fledged branches in the area.

Apart from its Simbanking platform, CRDB is also working with Malinyi Savings and Credit Cooperative Society and with Zidua Waziri Shop as its agents in the district, which residents can make use of.

Similarly, they can make use of NMB’s alternative banking system known as ‘Banking on the Wheels’.

Malinyi is one of the new administrative divisions, which, along with Songwe Region, Ubungo and Kigamboni districts in Dar es Salaam, among others, were announced during President Jakaya Kikwete’s leadership.

Since the establishment, no financial institution – out of Tanzania’s 58 commercial banks – has been able to open an operating outlet in the area, prompting its MP, DR Hadji Mponda (CCM), to ask the government over the issue.

But in response, Dr Kijaji said since the country embarked on financial reforms in 1991, the government was not directly involved in commercial bank operations.

“This was a deliberate attempt to encourage competition among commercial banks,” he said noting, however, that the government also understood the importance of financial services to citizens’ economic lives.

She said the government was aware that CRDB Bank and the National Microfinance Bank (NMB) were conducting feasibility studies with a view to setting up a branch in the area.

“Basically, the cost for running a branch is huge and commercial banks need to thoroughly examine if it will be economically viable to set up an outlet there. As such, the feasibility studies that will finally inform financial institutions on whether they should establish a branch or not,” she said, noting that presently, it made a lot of sense for residents to use agent and mobile phone banking platforms.