7 million Ghanaians are financially excluded – Ken Ashigbey

The CEO of Ghana Chamber of Telcommunication, Kenneth Ashigbey has said that about seven million Ghanaians are financially excluded.

According to him, this development is very worrying especially at a period where the government is encouraging financial institutions and individuals to run a cashless society.

Speaking at the second edition of AccraSpeaks, he said, stressed on the need for more platforms and open forums to discuss ways to integrate the 7 million excluded Ghanaians and how to run the much needed cashless system.

“There is the need to bring the over 7 million Ghanaians who do not have any account into the system, the good thing is that, the direction in which the needle is pointing is good, there are new innovations, the bank of Ghana is bringing in regulations but we need a lot more coherence of policies” he noted.

He added that, the government needs to set-up into the space of creating a conducive environment for easy operations of cashless system.

“I am happy that the Vice president said sometime next year that all government transactions will be done electronically, if this is done then it means that instead of using mobile money currently as a transfer system we will create a merchant payment system, an ecosystem where we will trade and when that happens it will bring the cost and charges placed on money transfer further down” he asaid.

Mr. Ashigbey was of the view that, when there is a seamless system, a lot more people will be brought onto the cashless system adding that, “ with the advent of online pension schemes, loans systems and Mobile money there were people who prior to that innovation did not have banks accounts or where financially excluded but now can buy treasury bills, pay bills and other things through their mobile money but that is not enough we need to do more of this so that we can be able to live for the development divide that we have.”

AccraSpeaks is a forum that discusses topical issues. This edition was themed “Achieving financial inclusion technology: are mobile money charges a drawback to inclusions?”

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