Women"s access to financial market services in Tanzania : the impact of economic reform

The report identifies issues on both the demand side (most notably, low income) and the supply side (especially a lack of institutional arrangements for small borrowers or a bias against women on non-economic grounds) that might hinder women"s access to financial market services, including not only credit but also saving instruments and, ultimately, transfer and payment services. The body of the study: provides a reprise of Tanzanian economic conditions over the past three decades, including how Tanzania"s financial institutions evolved between 1960 and 1990; reviews the reform process during the period 1990-95; and summarizes interviews with financial market participants in Dar es Salaam, Arusha, and Mwanza, Tanzania"s second largest city. Based on this review, the report derives a set of policy recommendations which follow a two-stage cascading structure. In the first stage, the gross macroeconomic/institutional defects in the financial sector are corrected; in the second stage, persisting macroeconomic gender bias is addressed. These recommendations assume the continuation of the donor-supported IMF Structural Adjustment Program, which, while it constrains the range of policies that might otherwise be adopted to improve women"s financial market access (e.g., subsidies or directed credit arrangements) provides a stabilization that benefits all Tanzanians, including women.