Mozambique: Maputo wants to delay opening of supermarkets , public services to ease congestion
FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Notícias]
In Mozambique, Electronic Money Institution(EMI) agents,which operate on the platform provided by mobile telecommunications operators, increased in number by 10.5% in the final quarter of last year, to almost 225,000, and now cover all 154 districts of the country.
According to a statistical report from the Bank of Mozambique to which Lusa had access on Monday, the total number of EMI agents totalled 203,240 last September, a figure that grew to 224,704 by the end of December.
The same report adds that all of the country’s districts already have these IME agents, from the city of Maputo, in the south of the country, with 34,634, to Larde, in the northern province of Nampula, with four.
By contrast, of the country’s 154 districts, 26 have no branches of traditional banks.
Mozambique currently has three EMIs, owned by the three mobile telecoms operators, which provide financial services via mobile phone, including money transfers between customers or payment for services.
Such solutions make it easier and more widespread for the population to access financial services, using only mobile phones and EMI agents on the street.
Mozambique’s EMIs last year broke their record for transfers, with more than 400 million taking place, according to previous data from the Bank of Mozambique.
The EMIs facilitated 401,178,582 transfers over the year (following 338.5 million operations in 2022 and 324.1 million in 2021)involving more than 340.2 billion meticais (€4.860 billion).
Also according to the Bank of Mozambique, in 2022 the country had 11,975,063 EMI accounts, up from 11,412,194 in 2021.
In 2023, the figure skyrocketed to 16,607,021 at the end of October; banks, by contrast, have around 5.5 million accounts.
In the budget proposal for 2024, Mozambique’s government plans to continue its fiscal policy reforms to “increase the level of revenue collection” – namely by “taxing the commissions of electronic money agents and institutions.”
Tmcel’s mKesh mobile wallet was the first EMI to be created in Mozambique in 2012, followed by Vodacom’s M-Pesa in 2013 and Movitel’s e-Mola the following year.
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