National Bank of Rwanda Governor Soraya Hakuziyaremye (Center-Left) and her team on Thursday presented the MPC
KIGALI – Rwanda’s financial system has grown into a Rwf17.5 trillion (US$12.1 bn) pool of assets with banks, insurers, pension funds and other financial institutions putting more resources behind an economy that grew by 10% in the first quarter.
The latest figures released by the National Bank of Rwanda (BNR) show a financial sector that has expanded by 23% in one year, while lending to the economy rose by 22% to about Rwf7 trillion.
Agriculture, one of the sectors that has traditionally struggled to attract sufficient formal financing, recorded a 177% increase in new lending during the first half of 2026, reaching Rwf57 billion.
Construction remains the biggest destination for credit, increasing its share of outstanding loans from 19% in the first half of 2025 to 23% this year. Trade, households and manufacturing were also among the major recipients.
BNR Governor Soraya Hakuziyaremye told a press conference this Thursday that some sectors continue to receive less domestic financing than others because of the dual challenge of supporting rapid economic expansion while remaining resilient against inflation and global uncertainty.
“Financial institutions have to lend prudently and where the risk is low,” she said after the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting. “Some of the challenges identified include corporate governance, transparency and financial disclosure. We are working to improve this and have better access to financing.”
Expansion Supported by A Growing Pool of Deposits Including Gold
In order to preserve the conditions for longer-term growth, monetary policy tightening is usually done to stabilize the economy, at the same time, the Central Bank is charged with diversifying the assets held in the country’s reserves.
Hakuziyaremye confirmed that Rwanda acquired gold during the last financial year and that it is now part of the country’s reserves.
She said the exact amount will be disclosed when audited financial statements are released in October, but indicated that Rwanda’s holdings are within the broad 10–15% range held by central banks globally.
Deposits held by banks and microfinance institutions reached Rwf7 trillion, up 16.5% from a year earlier. Banks accounted for more than Rwf6 trillion of outstanding loans, while microfinance institutions had lent about Rwf834 billion.
The Central Bank is also seeing a shift in sectors that have historically attracted limited domestic financing such as mining, which recorded an increase in credit during the first half of 2026 after receiving almost no financing during the same period last year.
Local banks have been cautious because mining requires more specialized knowledge to assess its risks, particularly after some lenders experienced non-performing loans in the sector.
“As we build more capacity, commercial banks are also likely to fund mining more, but usually energy projects are often financed outside conventional bank lending, through government, multilateral development institutions and capital markets,” Hakuziyaremye said.
A Fast Moving Financial System
BNR Governor Soraya M. Hakuziyaremye, speaking on Thursday
Meanwhile, electronic payments are becoming a much larger part of everyday economic activity, with the value of electronic transactions reaching the equivalent of 341% of GDP in the first half of 2026, compared with 321% during the same period last year.
The strongest acceleration followed the full migration to e-cash, an interoperable instant-payment platform. In its first two weeks after the migration, transactions jumped 155% to 14.6 million, while their value increased 25-fold to Rwf1.2 trillion.
The platform had about 4.7 million active users by the time of the Central Bank’s assessment, while 97.6% of transactions were being completed successfully at the end of July. Retail electronic payments reached Rwf27.8 trillion during the first half of the year.
For businesses and consumers, the development means a growing share of the economy can now move money instantly through formal financial channels rather than relying on slower or fragmented payment arrangements.
With this rapid digitization, reported financial fraud cases fell from 4,128 to 2,879 in the second quarter but the Central Bank warns that the decline alone is not enough, particularly as fraudsters increasingly use social engineering to target customers.
Rwanda’s Own Cushion and Stronger Buffers
The expansion of lending has so far been accompanied by relatively strong financial-sector buffers. Banks’ capital adequacy ratio stood at 22%, compared with a regulatory minimum of 15%, while microfinance institutions reached 30%.
Non-performing loans stood at 3% for banks and 2.3% for microfinance institutions. The insurance sector also remained strongly capitalized, with a capital adequacy ratio of 248% against a minimum requirement of 150%.
In order to keep this growth in motion, BNR is tightening oversight especially on financial institutions while it strengthens requirements around capital, governance, risk management and consumer protection.
The Central Bank has temporarily suspended new licenses for some of the 150 non-deposit-taking financial institutions that now operate in Rwanda. This is due to their outstanding loans increasing by close to 50% year-on-year.
The Governor said the rapidly expanding lenders are filling an important gap by serving customers who had previously struggled to access bank or microfinance loans, particularly for short-term borrowing, thus, should be supported to standardize.
The numbers show a financial system that is becoming a much larger part of the machinery through which Rwanda’s growth is being financed, paid for and increasingly connected.
