FINSCOPE TO REVEAL CITIZENS FINANCIAL BEHAVIOUR

TANZANIANS financial behaviour on how to generate and manage incomes in the last few years will feature high on findings of a new FinScope report.

The report, the fourth edition of FinScope Survey 2017, will be unveiled in Dar es Salaam this Thursday. According to FinScope, the survey provides an overview of financial behaviour of Tanzanians in terms of uptake and usage of financial services and highlights factors that prohibit and drive the habits.

Speaking yesterday ahead of the launch, the Chairperson of FinScope Survey 2017 Technical Committee from Bank of Tanzania (BoT), Dr Deogratius Macha, said the survey highlights achievements and challenges in the financial sector.

“The upcoming survey shows feelings of the market towards financial services, further showing how the same products and services in the market have been fairing. “It also gives the perception that consumers have of those products,” he explained.

The first FinScope survey was conducted in 2006, followed by other studies in 2009 and 2013. The BoT official noted that the previous surveys had put focus only at regional level in terms of analysis, but the new study had gone far to the district level.

The Financial Sector Deepening Trust of Tanzania (FSDT) took the lead in developing and managing the research for FinScope Survey 2017, reporting and sharing data with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), to make sure that the design and quality were up to scratch.

The FSDT Head of Research, Mr Elvis Mushi, said that even with all the work done by the government and the financial services sector, financial exclusion in Tanzania is still quite high. “This means that millions of people are still poor because they have difficulties accessing and using financial services because they are too far away, too expensive or they seem too complicated to use,” he said.

A representative with Ipsos Tanzania, Mr Eliamani Mmanyi, noted that for FinScope 2017, sampling was collected from 10,000 respondents as opposed to 8,000 in the past studies.

The Vice-Chairperson of the Steering Committee of FinScope 2017 and Senior Researcher from REPOA, Dr Blandina Kilama, said one of the significant findings of the survey is the behaviour of peoples’ access to finances, how they largely depend on family members for cash which they subsequently use to invest.