Technical Efficiency Assessment Using Data Envelopment Analysis: An Application to the Banking Sector of Côte D'Ivoire

Côte d'Ivoire is one of the largest economies in the West African Economic and Monetary Union, its banking sector as well. However, it seems that the banking sector faces some difficulties to transform the deposits at its disposal into credits for clients. In this context, the present study tried to address the issue of transformation of deposits into credits efficiently. To do so, 14 banks have been assessed using Data Envelopment Analysis method from 2008 to 2010. Taking into account two main approaches of this technique, the results revealed that Ivorian banks do not operate efficiently in terms of loans allocation. Also, a classification of banks, by ownership and origin, allows to discover that foreign ownership private banks are relatively more efficient than public ownership ones. Further analyses attribute the source of inefficiency to an incompatibility of production scale.