DUSHANBE, September 27, 2012, Asia-Plus – The Silk Road Newsline reports that according to a new 2012 Financial Access Survey released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, Uzbekistan strongly leads Central Asia in the number of commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults leaving behind the U.S. and Russia.
A new IMF study shows that Uzbekistan has 47.72 commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults, the highest number in the region, with the next ranked country being Kyrgyzstan with 7.72 bank branches followed by Tajikistan (6.67) and Kazakhstan (3.38).
The United States, for example, has 35.43 commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults while Russia has 37.09 bank branches and France has 41.58 bank branches.
Turkmenistan has not provided information on access to financial services to the IMF.
The new IMF Financial Access Survey shows that Kazakhstan leads Central Asia in the number of ATMs’ per 100,000 adults.
There are 65.80 ATMs’ per 100,000 adults in Kazakhstan followed by Kyrgyzstan (12.07), Tajikistan (7.68) and Uzbekistan (4.54).
Russia, for example, has 152.94 ATMs’ per 100,000 adults while France has 109.80 ATMs. The U.S. data for 2011 was not provided but there were 173.43 ATMs’ per 100,000 adults in the U.S. in 2009, according to the IMF survey.
Launched three years ago by Her Royal Highness Princess Máxima of the Netherlands, the U.N. Secretary General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, the IMF Financial Access Survey (FAS) collects data on access to and usage of financial services from central banks and other financial regulators around the world on an annual basis.
According to a similar survey, Global Findex, funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and published annually by the World Bank, there are currently 2.5 billion people worldwide who are without access to formal banking and do not have a bank account.
“Nearly two-thirds of the people who say they don’t use an account says it’s because they don’t have enough money. About a quarter of the people complain about high costs of banking and nearly the same amount complain about the distance traveling to a bank, which means long bus rides for many,” Asli Demirguc-Kunt, Director of Development Policy in the World Bank’s Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC), and Chief Economist of the Financial and Private Sector Network (FPD), said in a statement at the release of the 2011 Global Findex report in Washington in April.
The 2011 Global Findex shows that 42 percent of adults have an account at a bank or other formal banking institutions in Kazakhstan followed by Uzbekistan (23 percent), Kyrgyzstan (4 percent) and Tajikistan (3 percent).
