Collapsed Banks still keeping 93% of assets

• Posted on June 3, 2021June 3, 2021
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

GOVERNMENT HAS been able to recoup only GH¢1.7 billion out of a total of GH¢25 billion assets belonging to banks which collapsed in 2017  under the financial sector clean-up exercise embarked upon by the Central Bank.

Dr. Ernest Addison, Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), who disclosed this to journalists Monday in Accra at a press conference after the bank’s 100th monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting, said the difficulty in regaining the assets had been fueled by litigation by the defunct banks.

He highlighted that, “Things are not going as fast as we would want them to,” due to the ongoing court cases.

A lot of commercial banks operating in the country in 2017 were found to be going through difficult times due to bad governance, insolvency and liquidity issues, to mention a few.

To correct the harm that had been caused, the universal banks operating in the country were directed to provide a new minimum capital of GH¢400 million by the end of 2018.

The directive exposed the weaknesses of a lot of the banks as they could not provide the requested capital. Such banks had no option than to have their licences revoked while others considered mergers.

UT Bank and Capital Bank were taken over by GCB Bank Ltd while in the case of UniBank Ghana, Beige Bank, Royal Bank, Sovereign Bank, Construction Bank, these were amalgamated into the current Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG) Ltd.

Meanwhile, Dr. Addison has indicated the banking sector maintained its resilience through to end-April 2021, with strong growth in total assets, deposits and investments, the Bank of Ghana has said.

Total assets increased by 16.4 per cent to GH¢155.7 billion and this reflected strong growth in investments in government securities by 34.9 per cent to GH¢73.3 billion funded by deposits and loan repayments.

BY Samuel Boadi