KARACHI: ‘Access to Finance’ is part of the National Financial Inclusion vision as it will serve dual purpose of gauging the impact of our financial inclusion initiatives since 2008 and provide baseline data.

This was said by State Bank of Pakistan Governor Ashraf Mahmood Wathra on Tuesday at the launch of ‘Access to Finance (A2F) Survey 2015’.

“One of the key challenges to access to finance has been the lack of demand side information which is necessary for understanding the barriers to financial inclusion. Without such information the market doesn’t have the insight and capacity to develop client centric products and services,” he said.

SBP initiated the A2F Survey 2015 to assess the state of financial access and usage in the country. The comprehensive country level study of more than 10,500 respondents was geared to measure and analyse the current and foreseeable demand for financial services in Pakistan.

The survey results show that access to financial services has significantly increased in Pakistan since 2008, with 16 per cent of the adult population now having access to a bank account (including mobile wallets), improving from 11pc in 2008. Moreover, 23pc of the adult population has access to formal financial services up from 12pc in 2008.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2015