Financial Inclusion and Development in the CEMAC

Abstract

This paper examines financial inclusion and development in the CEMAC. We explore the level of financial inclusion in the CEMAC through a benchmarking exercise.We construct a measure of financial development gap and analyze its determinants. Using panel data regressions, we find that inflation, income, and natural resources explain most of the financial development level but that better financial sector governance and stronger economic governance are positively associated with financial sector development. Richer and poorer countries can be equally far from their expected financial development levels. Finally, we use a benchmarking exercise to identify countries that have successfully reduced the financial development gap and propose policy measures that CEMAC countries could use to boost financial inclusion.

Transferencias monetarias condicionadas e inclusión financiera en América Latina: una primera aproximación regional

“…al. 2014;Alter, 2015). Sin embargo, prácticamente no existe estudio alguno que haya analizado la relación macroeconómica entre las CCT y la inclusión financiera mediante un análisis econométrico con datos de panel.…”

“…al. 2014;Alter, 2015). Sin embargo, dado el tamaño limitado de nuestro panel, como consecuencia de la falta de datos para Latinoamérica, se optó por un número reducido de variables de control.…”

“…Siguiendo la literatura mencionada que vincula al sector financiero con distintas variables (Kign y Levine, 1993;Rajan y Zingales, 1998;Burgess y Pande, 2005;Levine, 2005;Alter, 2015), hemos incluido los siguientes cinco indicadores como variables de control: ingreso ( ), medido por el PBI per-cápita a dólares internacionales 2005; pobreza ( ), medida como el porcentaje de la población que vive con menos de 1,90 U$D al día; el porcentaje de la población que reside en áreas rurales ( ); la distribución del ingreso ( ) medida mediante el índice de Gini (estas cuatro variables obtenidas del WDI 2015); y los años totales de escolarización promedio ( ), provista por Barro y Lee (2015).…”

Financial Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…IMF (2015b) follows a similar approach with a different financial development index. Barajas and others (2013) used similarly structured regression to benchmark countries' private sector credit-to-GDP ratios against a statistical benchmark, which has been applied to specific country groups in various cases (for example, Alter and Yontcheva 2015;Newiak and Awad 2015). Similar results were obtained when examining financial institutions and financial markets separately.…”

Chad: Selected Issues

“…Similar to other SSA countries, underdevelopment of financial services and lagging financial inclusion are chronic problems in Chad. As showed in Alter and Yontcheva (2015), the "financial development gap," which is the ratio between the benchmark and actual private credit to GDP level, was nearly 3 percent in Chad in 2012, compared to 1.7 percent in SSA which is already considered as a large deficiency gap. Even by other metrics to be discussed below, Chad is still lagging behind its peer countries.…”