Abstract
Financial inclusion has been a major driver of economic growth and a primary strategy for achieving it in the majority of economies globally over the past few years. Most nations have regarded it as a modern program aimed at ensuring equitable and sustainable economic expansion. To this extent, the paper sheds light on the causal relationship between economic growth and financial inclusion in Egypt between 2008 and 2023. The paper aims to address the following question: How do indicators of financial inclusion impact economic growth in Egypt?
To address this question, the research aimed to analyse the cause-effect relationship between a set of financial inclusion indicators, including the number of bank accounts, the number of bank payment cards, the number of bank branches, the number of ATMs, the volume of individual deposits, and the value of credit provided to individuals, as well as the economic growth of Egypt according to Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The research employed the Vector Autoregression (VAR) method to investigate the causal relationships among the research variables. The results showed that measures of financial inclusion directly affect Egypt’s economic growth rate. Based on these results, the article recommends enhancing the provision of banking services by streamlining the opening requirements for bank accounts and business licenses, and by improving access to these services across all areas of the Arab Republic of Egypt.