By Gadiosa Lamtey @gadiosa2 glamtey@tz.nationmedia.com
Dar es Salaam. Gone are the days when expatriates occupied most of chief executive officer (CEO) posts in commercial banks as locals are aggressively honing their banking skills to get an increasing share of the pie: plum positions.
Data collected by The Citizen shows that the number of Tanzanian CEOs in commercial banks is on the rise, while that of expatriates is on the decrease.
This, analysts say, reflects the fact that the number of competent Tanzanians to fill such positions has been on the rise as the country fosters its financial and banking training programmes to meet the requirements for such challenging posts.
Bank of Tanzania (BoT) figures put the current total number of commercial banks and banking institutions in the country at 52, a drop from 56 as of December 2015.
Of the current number however, 31 banks – equivalent to 60 percent of the total number of lenders – are headed by Tanzanians.
“This reflects that the number of locally-grown banking professionals is on the rise – and, thus, reduces the need to hire from overseas. But, it also protects employment for locals,” the acting director for Financial Sector Supervision at the BoT, Mr Nassor Omar, told The Citizen.
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In December 2015, 30 out of 56 banking institutions in Tanzania were headed by foreign CEOs, leaving their local counterparts with only 26 positions.
This meant that expatriates accounted for 54 per cent of the total number of CEOs in the banking sub-sector in 2015.
Bankers say the rise in the number of local CEOs in the banking industry was good for the market – and that it was an indication that Tanzania was heading for a situation that’s similar to other well-performing economies like that of neighbouring Kenya.“It’s a good development. Most top banks in Kenya, for instance, are managed by locals – and it makes sense,” said the Tanzania Agriculture Development Bank managing director, Japhet Justine. Under normal circumstances, he said, locals were better-placed to understand the needs and requirements of the local market than their expatriate counterparts.“There is power in integrating locals in making decisions that also offer room for more mentorship for upcoming CEOs,” he said, narrating how his bank was working with seven other lenders, including the CRDB and NMB Banks, on a number of products such as grant schemes for agriculture that were purely designed to cater to the needs of small-scale […]
