The increasing number of players in the banking industry entails stiff competition. Competition should normally favour customers because in the quest to win more customers, banks tend to relax terms and conditions for their products and improve service. However in Malawi the competition is yet to bear fruit by narrowing the gap between lending rates and deposit rates.
See Pilat, D., F. Lee and B. van Ark (2002), “Production and use of ICT: a sectoral perspective on productivity growth in the OECD area”, OECD Economic Studies No 35. See GomezSalvador, Musso, Stocker and Turunen (2006), “Labour productivity developments in the euro area”, ECB Occasional Paper series No 53. 10  European Commission.