November 02, (THEWILL) – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that Nigerian banks closed 234 branches and 649 Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) in 2020.
This led to a decline in the country’s Financial Access Score (FAS) to 4.44 in the year against 4.78 in 2019.
The IMF disclosed this in its Financial Access Survey 2021 Trends and Developments released Monday.
The report disclosed that the international community uses two FAS indicators to monitor the Target 8.10 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which aims at strengthening the capacity of domestic financial institutions to expand access to banking and financial services
The two FAS indicators are Number of Commercial Bank Branches per 100,000 Adults and Number of ATMs per 100,000 Adults.
According to the report, Nigeria recorded declines in these two critical FAS indicators and 12 other indicators among the 64 indicators measured by the FAS.
The report further disclosed that this was due to the decline in the number of commercial bank branches in Nigeria to 5,158 in 2020 from 5,392 in 2019.
This brings the number of Commercial Bank Branches per 1,000 km2 in Nigeria to 5.94 in 2020 from 5.68 in 2019.
The report, in addition, showed a sharp decline in the number of registered mobile money agent outlets in Nigeria from 145,800 in 2019 to 129,154 in 2020 – a decline of 11 percent.
About the Author
Sam Diala is a Bloomberg Certified Financial Journalist with over a decade of experience in reporting Business and Economy. He is Business Editor at THEWILL Newspaper, and believes that work, not wishes, creates wealth.
