Farkhund Yousafzai
ISLAMABAD: Financial inclusion in Pakistan has increased by nine percentage points between 2020 and 2022, while a similar increase in financial inclusion was achieved over seven years prior to the year 2020, it revealed in the Karandaaz Financial Inclusion Survey 2022 (KFIS).
The 2022 edition of the survey addresses customers’ knowledge and awareness about the financial services market’s key facets of interoperability.
The survey showed that mobile money has been an essential driver of this push, with registered mobile money users having more than doubled from 9% to 19% of adult Pakistanis.
Survey reveals some chronic gaps
However, the findings also reveal considerable and chronic gaps regarding the inclusion of rural populations, women, and across provinces where financial inclusion in Punjab, Islamabad Capital Territory, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan exceeds 30%, in Balochistan, it does not even reach 15%, while the financial inclusion of women being as low as 5 %.
Inequality in the provision of financial services illustrated that pockets of the citizens remain un-serviced.
