Through a working paper dubbed 'Assessing Bank Competition within the East African Community' that aims at estimating the degree of competition in the EAC banking systems, the IMF challenged new entrants for not taking the advantage to include the large number of the unbanked population.

Despite large numbers of financial exclusions, the IMF says that new entrants into the market in recent years show there are no regulatory barriers per se to competition in the banking system of the EAC countries

It comes when more than half of the population in Rwanda and Tanzania has no access to financial services at all, a key policy challenge even in other EA member states.

According the IMF analysis, Kenya has the highest percentage of people with access to formal financial services, at 40 percent, Rwanda 21 percent, Tanzania 17 percent and Uganda with 28 percent.

"Why are these new participants unable to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the large unbanked segment of the population in each country to compete more effectively with the former state owned banks that retain a dominant position in each country?" the IMF asked in the paper.