The Competitiveness Of Togolese Banking Sector

Development of a country depends on it economic growth which depends also on several factors which can be both micro and macroeconomic. The financial sector is the lung of the economy more exactly the banking sector contributes in a non negligible part to this growth.The competitiveness, effectiveness and efficiency of banking sector make it reliable to the economy. Unfortunately evidences have shown that most Sub-Saharan countries don?t rely much on their financial sector, mainly due to challenges they face. Since 1990 Togolese banking sector as well as West African Economic and Monetary Union(WAEMU) counties banking has undergone gradual but notable reforms. One of the aims of these changes is to increase the competitiveness of this sector. This paper entitled ??The Competitiveness of Togolese Banking Sector??, shows different levels of competitiveness which are firm, nation and regional level. To conduct an example work, we will only raise the focus on firm level and national competitiveness level. Our objective is to identify and analyze the economy development trend and find out factors of competitiveness of banking sector in Togo and in WAEMU. We use micro and macro analysis, our microeconomic analysis uses both regression model and SCP(StructureConduct-Performance) framework for Togolese banking sector while macroeconomic analysis uses regression models for WAEMU banking sector. The research covers a period of Thirteen years(from 2000 to 2012), with eight commercial banks in Togo(micro level) and the Eight countries of WAEMU(macro level). This research proxies the asset of banks as competitiveness. The result of the study shows that, at the micro level Ecobank is the most competitive bank in Togo, it also demonstrate that Togolese banking sector is less competitive compared to Ivorian banking sector ranking 5th in WAEMU. The factors driving bank competitiveness are profit, deposit, and loans to the economy. The result suggests that the reform that has started since 1990 should be completed; there should be organizational and financial restructuring. Efforts should be done in order to promote short term loans and to facilitate the introduction of NTIC(New Technology of Information and Communication) in the financial system.