The Banking Commission of the West African Monetary Union (WAMU) has taken stock of the economic and/or banking activity of the WAEMU zone in 2019. In Burkina Faso, out of a total of 2,043,700 bank accounts, the Bank of Africa (BOA) is doing well with 541,205 accounts and is at the top of the list. It is followed in order by ECOBANK, 450,088 accounts and Coris BANK international, 330,915 accounts. In general, international banks dominate the market with 49.3% of the Union's banking assets and hold 54.3% of bank accounts.

Customer loans within the WAEMU increased by 10.0%, to 22,924.0 billion CFA francs at the end of 2019, according to the report of the WAEMU Banking Commission. They are mainly composed of short-term loans (53.7%), medium-term loans (36.5%), long-term loans (4.4%), finance leases (0.8%) and outstanding loans (4.6%).

The resources mobilised by the Union's credit institutions increased by 11.4% year-on-year to 33,129.6 billion CFA francs at the end of 2019. They are composed of deposits and borrowings (84.1%), net equity (11.2%) and other resources (4.7%).

At 31 December 2019, the Union's Net Banking Income (GNP) stood at 2,057.3 billion, up 4.3%, year-on-year, according to the Banking Commission.
Provisional overall net income amounted to 542.3 billion at the end of 2019 compared to 379.4 billion in 2018, a growth of 42.9%.

Profits are divided into 227.5 billion for Côte d'Ivoire, 94.2 billion for Senegal, 77.9 billion for Burkina Faso, 52.1 billion for Mali, 31.0 billion for Togo, 26.6 billion for Niger, 20.0 billion for Benin and 12.9 billion for Guinea-Bissau.

A banking market dominated by international banks

The EU banking system had 153 credit institutions authorised in December 2019, compared to 147 in 2018. Of the 153, Burkina Faso has 19 institutions, respectively 16, 17 and 18 for Benin, Mali and Niger while the two economic weights of the Union Ivory Coast and Senegal have 31 and 30 approved credit institutions.

According to the WAEMU Banking Commission, international banks dominate the market with 49.3% of the Union's banking assets. They account for 34.9% of the branch network, 43.9% of ATMs, 54.3% of bank accounts and employ 49.1% of the workforce. As for the sub-regional banks, they hold 49.0% of the market share.

They account for 37.4% of agencies, 56.1% of ATMs, 45.7% of customer accounts and 44.6% of staff. The Union's international banking financial institutions account for 0.2% of the workforce, 1.4% of the counters and 0.3% of the workforce. Sub-regional banking financial institutions account for 1.3% of assets, 26.2% of counters and 5.9% of staff.

The 29 banking groups, operating in the WAEMU as of December 31, 2019, come from the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ), the Maghreb, the European Union, the Economic Community of Central African States (CEMAC), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the rest of the world.

Bank of Africa registers the highest number of bank accounts

Banks in Burkina Faso have just over 2 million bank accounts, according to the Union's banking commission. The Bank of Africa (BOA), gets away with 541,205 accounts and rises to the top of the list. It is followed in order by ECOBANK, 450,088 accounts and Coris bank international, 330,915 accounts.

The 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th places are respectively occupied by International business bank (IB BANK), 26,506 accounts, La Banque de l'union Burkina Faso (BDU-BF), 19,923 accounts, Wendkuni bank international (WBI), 5,475 accounts and the Banque agricole du Faso (BADF) 1,373 accounts.

Overall, the Union's gross domestic product (GDP), in real terms, grew by 6.1% in 2019 compared to 6.4% in 2018. This economic growth was mainly driven by the tertiary sector, with a contribution of 3.6 points. Contributions from the primary and secondary sectors amounted to 0.8 percentage points and 1.7 percentage points respectively.

In Burkina Faso, economic growth was 6.8% in 2019 against 5.7% in 2018. It comes just after Niger 7.0% in 2019 and is at the same level as Ivory Coast. The inflation rate, on average per year, came out at -0.7% in 2019, against a realization of 1.2% in 2018 in the WAEMU area. This rate in Burkina Faso was -3.2%, +0.8% in Côte d'Ivoire and -2.5% in Niger.