Micro Financial Institutions (Mfis) And Savings Mobilization Services For The Poor In Tanzania

Poor households save in various forms for various purposes. Although empirical evidence suggests that the poor would deposit if appropriate financial institutions and savings facilities were available, little progress has been made to establish Micro Financial institutions (MFIs) as full-fledged financial intermediaries. MFIs offer only credit, and savings mobilization remains the forgotten half of micro-finance. Qualitative research design using case study approach was used. It was generally observed that, low-income business owners are not so poor as suggested in the vicious cycle of low income, low savings and low investment because they demonstrated their ability to save. It is recommended that formal and informal financial services be created so that they can identify needs and opportunities for establishing savings mobilization for the poor. The paper is organized into five sections. Section one deals with theoretical aspects of savings and savings mobilization while section two deals with literature review. Section three deals with the research problem and study methodology while section four present the findings and section five presents conclusions and recommendations.African Journal of Finance and Management Vol.13(1) 2004: 63-7