Determinants of deposit of commercial banks in Sudan: an empirical investigation (1970-2012)

This present study scrutinises the factors determining the magnitude of deposits of commercial banks operating in Sudan during the period from 1970 to 2012. Factors under scrutiny are inflation rate, total credit as a percentage of GDP, interest rate (profit margin), money supply as the GDP percentage and per capita GDP. This study utilises the approach of autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) to co-integration and the related error correction model (ECM) for the examination of the factors. The main results obtained suggest that within the long-run, inflation and money supply show negative impacts on total deposits. Conversely, credit, interest rate (profit margin) and real per capita GDP have positive impact on total deposits. Within the short-run, using OLS method, although nearly variables demonstrate that they are statistically significant, they are exhibiting the wrong signs. Nevertheless, the coefficient of the lagged residual (ECt−1) within the ECM model has the correct sign and is highly significant which implies that in the long-run equilibrium, the dependent variable has the inclination for adapting to any deviations.