THE Bank of Tanzania (BoT) has vowed to hold accountable deceitful bank officials, including blacklisting them and take legal measures against fraudulent borrowers with the aim of protecting banks and other financial institutions in the country.
BoT Governor Prof Florens Luoga said yesterday in Dar es Salaam that some people have been providing false information to the banks in order to obtain loans the situation which he said has affected operations of some banks.
” Some people have been taking loans from different banks and spend the money in unintended activities as result they fail to repay the loans and affect the operations of the banks which provided the loans,” he said.
He said the central bank established credit reference bureau in order to ensure that borrowers do not provide false information to the banks.
Prof Luoga said that BoT will deal with both fraudulent borrowers and bank officials who issued the loans because they are supposed to verify the information provided and be satisfied that they are providing loans to the right person.
“We are going to deal with all the culprits regardless their status … the bank has already started taking measures including filing cases in court,” he said.
Prof Luoga further said that providing loans to unscrupulous people threatens the deposits of other clients and the survival of the banks.
He said that BoT has set up a code of conduct for banks and its employees to ensure that they exercise integrity.
“If it comes to our attention that some employers are collaborating with unscrupulous people to defraud banks through loans they will be blacklisted,” he said.
He noted that the financial institutions were required to hold accountable all officials who are involved in defrauding the banks adding that failure to that will lead the BoT to take measures including blacklisting the employee.
He said that the central bank has been always taking measures to ensure that banks and other financial institutions were protected such as conducting audits for staff, operations and IT among others in order to promote its growth.
He said BoT had taken steps to ensure the banking sector was profitable.
‘Loans to the private sector have been growing from 1.7 percent in 2016 to 11 percent in 2019, but we aim to reach 20 percent for economic growth,” he said.
He, however, said that the use of financial services have been growing as important catalyst to the growth of the economy.
He said besides instituting measures that enabled people to perform various transactions, the bank sector also ensure financial safety in the country.
Prof Luoga, however, noted that Tanzania was still lagging behind in using banking services thus leading to challenges such as most of the payments being done out of the banking system.
