Ref: The 62% of Indonesians don’t have money to deposit in the bank. So no 
money, no honey and no funny. Let’s enjoy the song of ABBA –Money, Money : 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETxmCCsMoD0&ob=av2e

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/money-in-the-bank-not-for-62-of-indonesians/480942

Money in the Bank? Not for 62% of Indonesians
Dion Bisara | November 25, 2011


Despite government efforts, most households still lack savings accounts, 
according to a new central bank survey. 

“We found that 62 percent of homes are without any kind of savings accounts,” 
Muliaman Hadad, a Bank Indonesia deputy governor, said on Friday during a 
banking seminar in Jakarta. 

Geography was the biggest challenge, Muliaman said. 

“Many people live in remote areas, so they don’t have access to a bank. The 
distances are just too great,” he said, adding that people also failed to get 
savings accounts because they lacked information about banking. 

Muliaman said the survey findings seemed to affirm an earlier study by the 
World Bank, which found that about 50 million Indonesians had no access to the 
formal financial sector. 

In fact, he said, for every 1,000 residents there were 514 term deposits in 
Indonesia, compared to 1,616 term deposits in Malaysia. 

“Our savings rate is still very low compared to other countries,” he said. 
“There must be a scheme to help more people engage in banking.” 

In an effort to attract first-time bankers, the central bank last year 
encouraged local lenders to offer no-frills bank accounts. 

The resulting accounts offered some perks — such as no minimum balance and no 
charges — but they failed to attract many new customers, possibly because the 
local banks, which had little to gain from the service, put little effort into 
promoting it. 

In September 2010, the government also suggested a scheme to issue financial 
identity numbers. It hoped that the tool would allow banks to track the 
financial performance and credit histories of people currently denied banking 
services because they could not show records of their financial histories. 

The government planned to issue the numbers at the start of this year, but as 
the year draws to a close, the program is still not running.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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