Wednesday, 26th November 2014
Sri Lanka has the highest level of financial inclusion in South Asia with easy access to finance, according to a recently published Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) working paper.
“In South Asia, only 33 percent of adults have an account at a formal financial institution—the second lowest share of the world’s regions, higher only t han Sub-Saharan Africa,” t he paper authored by Dr.Saman Kelegama and Ganga Tilakaratna noted.
In Sri Lanka, 68 percent of adults have an account in a financial i nstitution, compared to 38 percent in Bangladesh and 35 percent in India.
In the aspect of borrowing, Bangladesh led with around 23 percent of adults while Sri Lanka came in second with over 16 percent.
33 licensed commercial banks and license specialised banks operated in Sri Lanka at the end of 2012 with 6,487 bank branches and 2,538 ATMs.
In 2006, 82.5 percent of the households in Sri Lanka were accessing either these formal financial institutions or semi-formal ones such as micro-financing institutions (MFIs), while 98 percent of the households had access to these i nstitutions by 2009.
From : http://dailymirrorepaper.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
