Dar es Salaam. The number of jobs in banking slightly increased last year, compared with 2018, although individual banks recorded mixed trends in the matter.
An analysis done of financial statements of 30 commercial banks for the fourth quarter of last year showed that, generally, the number of jobs in the industry rose to 14,644 last year from 14,359 in 2018, a difference of 285 job positions.
This upward trend came at a time when most banks were recovering from a challenging credit market, business turbulences and financial accounting rearrangements following adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS-9) in January 2018.
The financial statements showed that nearly half of the reviewed banks recorded an increased number of staff; others recorded job cuts – and yet more made no changes.
According to the analysis, some banks increased the number of their workers due to expansion of their business activities – particularly opening of new branches – while others cut jobs due to adoption of modern technologies, includingdigital banking. Also, some banks were implementing costs-cutting measures as they adjusted to a changing business environment.
However, the adoption of new technologies – which enabled most bank services to be conducted from outside banking halls- slowed the creation of direct jobs in the industry.
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Other factors for the low jobs creation margins, the analysis revealed, included shifting of workers from one bank to another while some workers reached retirement age or resigned for various reasons – and were not replaced immediately, or at all.
“It seems that, since the adoption of new technologies and innovations in offering banking services, most banks have kind of frozen jobs creation after adopting mobile and Internet services,” the analysis showed.
Jobs increase
The reviewed financial statements show that ten banks managed to create new jobs last year, with CRDB Bank – which is listed with the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) – being in the lead on this.CRDB Bank is one of the most profitable banks in Tanzania. It created 366 new employment opportunities last year, rising to 3,467 from 3,101 in 2018.Azania Bank became second after it created 152 new jobs last year, rising from 359 to 511 employees.However, the increase in the bank’s employees was a result of its merger with Bank M, which was put under Bank of Tanzania (BoT) supervision following a liquidity stress.The central bank gave the nod for the two banks to merge in […]
