Konya Ovası Projesi kapsamında kurulan kalkınma idaresinin amacı bölgenin gelişme potansiyelini çok sektörlü olarak ortaya koymak, rekabet gücünü öne çıkarmak, ekonomik büyüme ve kalkınma hızını artırmaktır. Finansal sistem ise ekonomik büyüme ve kalkınma sürecinin temel taşı olarak kabul edilmektedir. Finansal sistemin lokomotifi ise ülkemizde ve dünyada bankacılık sektörüdür. KOP Bölgesinde de yerel yatırımları hızlandırmak, bölgenin rekabet gücünü artırmak ve kalkınma planlarını hayata geçirmek için bankacılık hizmetlerine erişim önemli bir unsurdur. Çalışmamızın amacı KOP Bölgesinde (i) bankacılık hizmetlerine erişimin ve bu hizmetlerin kullanımının araştırılması, (ii) ülke verileri ile karşılaştırılmasıdır. Çalışma 2010-2012 dönemini kapsamakta olup dört bölümden oluşmaktadır. Giriş bölümünün ardından ikinci bölümde literatür taraması yapılmıştır, üçüncü bölümde veriler paylaşılmıştır. Dördüncü ve son bölümde sonuç yer almaktadır. Araştırmada ülke, bölge ve bölgedeki illerin verileri arasında bankacılık hizmetlerine demografik ve coğrafi erişim ile bu hizmetlerin kullanımı açılarından önemli farklılıklar belirlenmiştir.

Financial system of a country is considered as the cornerstone of economic growth and development. As in the rest of the World, banking is the major provider of financial services in Turkey. In the literatüre, there are many studies reveal that a wellfunctioning banking sector is essential in achieving economic growth targets, reducing poverty and inequality in income distribution. In other words, banks play the most important role in the development of the less developed regions among the financial institutions. In this context, to build up an accessible banking system is one of the main goals of every economy. Access to financial services, however, is not synonymous to the use of financial services. Economic agents might have access to financial services, but may decide not to use them, either for socio-cultural reasons, or because opportunity costs are too high. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully distinguish between two different concepts when discussing the outreach of the banking system. The first one is accessing and the possibility of using financial services and second is actual use of financial services. The World Bank uses two classes of indicators that correspond to the different concepts of access to and use of financial services. The first one includes the data on the number of branches and ATMs relative to population and area, to capture the geographic and demographic penetration of the banking system. Higher branch intensity in demographic and geographic terms would indicate higher possibilities of access and the opportunity to use financial services by households and enterprises. In order to measure the actual use of deposit and credit services, the data on the number of loan and deposit accounts relative to population and average loan and deposit size relative to GDP per capita are used as the second one. Higher ratios of the number of loan and deposit accounts per capita and lower average loan and deposit amounts relative to GDP per capita will indicate use of deposit and credit services by a greater share of the population and “smaller” clients. The indicators which are used in this study derived from these World Bank indicators. The regional development agencies are established under GAP (Southeastern Anatolia Project), EAP (East Anatolia Project), DOKAP (Eastern Black Sea Project) and KOP (Konya Plain Project). The main purposes of these agencies are to (i) reduce interregional differences and (ii) improve the competitiveness of these regions. The KOP region, the subject of our study, contains Aksaray, Karaman, Konya and Nigde cities. This region constitutes 8.5% of Turkey in area with 65 thousand square kilometers and about 4% of Turkey with population approximately 3 million people. There are 50 districts, 263 towns and 1.002 villages in four cities of KOP region. According to the socio-economic development index of Turkey (SEDI) in 2011, the ranking of Konya is 20, Karaman 32, Aksaray 55 and Nigde 56. Access to and use of banking services are very important elements to accelerate local investments, improve the competitiveness and implement development policies across KOP region. The aim of our study is to (i) investigate access to and use of banking services in KOP Region and (ii) compare it with national data. Our study consists of four sections. Following the introduction, literature review conducted in the second part. In section three, the description and measurement methods of access to and use of banking services are given. Data collection and analyses are also applied in this chapter. The paper ends with some concluding remarks. The study uses the data of 2010-2012 period collected from the publications and reports of Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency of Turkey, Central Bank of Turkey, The Banks Association of Turkey, Participation Banks Association of Turkey, The Interbank Card Center of Turkey and The World Bank. 24 of the 35 banks operating in Turkey have also branches in this region. Results of the research reveal that, branches and ATMs across the country per km ² rise in the research period. It indicates that access to banking services is becoming widespread in the country. In the same period, the number of branches and ATMs per km ² in KOP region increased at a rate higher than the country. Besides that, the geographic and demographic penetration of the banking system in KOP region is below the avarage of Turkey. Demographic indicators (ATM/population and employee/population) of access to banking services in KOP region remained behind the national average. On the other hand, the average population per bank employee is around 400 in Turkey and 800 in the region while it is 150 people in the European Union. In addition to this, the population per branch is 2,000 in EU, 7.000 in Turkey and 9.000 in KOP region. These indicators are evaluated as growth and employment potential of the sector. The cash loans and deposits per capita increased both in the region and the country in 2010-2012 period. The increase in cash loan / deposit ratio indicate that the growth of total credits amount is higher than deposits. But, loan amount per capita is significantly behind the national average. The decrease in domestic savings rate is one of the reasons of reduction of the share of deposits. In addition, the effects of cultural and religious reasons should be investigated. The shares of loans to food, soft drinks and tobacco, and agriculture sectors among all sectors are significantly higher while the the shares of construction, energy and wholesale trade sectors are lower than the loan rates of these sectors in country level. The rate of consumer credits to total cash loans is above the rate of the country. Depending on the type of loan, consumer credits per capita is close to the national average or below it. On the other hand, the increase in non-performing loans ratio, is below the national average. As a result, access to and use of the financial system remain low compared to the national average. But, it also indicates a potential. The inclusion of individuals and institutions who do not have access to the banking services yet will increase the amount of savings, increase in savings will contribute to the accumulation of capital and this will support economic growth and regional development. The access of more people and institutions to the banking services will help the impelementation of monetary and fiscal policies effectively.