Govt not ‘killing’ local banks – Oppong Nkrumah
Government has no intentions to collapse the financial sector or wipe out indigenous banks, Minister of Information Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has said.
He has therefore refuted suggestions that government is rolling out anti-local bank policies and embarking on actions detrimental to local banks.
He was responding to developments in the financial sector over the past weeks.
The Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG) Limited was recently formed by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) when it fused together five struggling local banks, including The Beige Bank, Sovereign Bank, The Royal Bank, uniBank and The Construction Bank.
In 2017, UT Bank and Capital Banks also collapsed and the GCB Bank assumed the assets of the two banks.
Meanwhile, new corporate governance reforms and a minimum capital requirement of GHS400 million is being implemented with a December 2018 deadline for local banks to oblige.
In a press conference on Wednesday 15 August 2018, Mr Nkrumah said in recent weeks some political figures have claimed that the action by authorities to streamline activities in the financial sector is “politically motivated” and an attempt to collapse the system.
He said such accusations are “blatantly ill-informed” adding “this is rather the time to tone down and soberly reflect and come to terms with the nature of the challenge and the efforts the new administration is taking to resolve it”.
According to him, if the current government wants to be partisan about recent developments in the financial sector then, “the current administration will rather be the one with a moral high ground to question members and assigns of the previous administration on what they did all of these years and that the situation deteriorated further”.
He emphasised that the focus of the current administration is to govern and deliver change in all areas including the financial services sector.
Source : Ghana/ClassFMonline.com
