The Bank of Zambia – BoZ has launched its new strategic plan, covering the period 2020 to 2023, under the theme, “Building an Inclusive and Resilient Financial Sector”.
BoZ Governor, Dr. Denny Kalyalya has stated in a statement made available to the Zambian Business Times – ZBT on July 28, 2020, that the 2020 to 2023 Strategic Plan represents the priority areas the Bank wants to concentrate on during this four-year period hence the Bank has picked on Financial Stability and Financial Inclusion as the two focus areas for the Plan.
He said in the area of Financial Stability, the Bank will pursue initiatives such as Strengthening Micro-prudential and Macro-prudential Regulation and Supervision, Develop and Strengthen Financial Market Infrastructures Oversight and Enhance Data Collection, Management, and Application.
He added that with regard to Financial Inclusion, the Bank will also focus on Promoting Digital Financial Services, Pushing the Rural Finance frontier forward, increasing availability of Children and Youth friendly financial products, Disseminating Zambia’s financial inclusion information and Mainstreaming Gender in the Financial Sector.
“In the Financial Inclusion space, we are aware of the huge challenges that still need to be addressed to bring more Zambians into the banked population.Therefore, by adopting financial inclusion as a focus area, we want, among other things, to contribute to the attainment of the National Financial Inclusion Strategy formal financial inclusion target of 70% by 2022 and to reduce the gender gap to 5% by 2023.” He said
Dr. Kalyalya added that given the severity of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the Bank has had to avoid hosting a physical event to launch the new strategic plan but rather implore its esteemed partners and other stakeholders to visit the website (www.boz.zm) to access the 2020- 2023 Strategic Plan and other important information about the Bank and its operations.
