Akufo-Addo government erred in banking sector clean-up – Alban Bagbin

The Speaker of Parliament, Rt Hon Alban Sumana Bagbin, says the Akufo-Addo-led government erred in its clean-up of the banking and financial sector.

According to him, the government should have channeled resources into supporting the indigenous banks instead of collapsing.

In a bid to restore confidence in the banking sector, the government embarked on a clean-up exercise in August 2017.

The Bank of Ghana spent over GH¢20 billion on the exercise, which reduced the number of banks from 34 to 23.

While some commercial banks were merged to form the Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited, state-owned GCB was allowed to swallow others.

Addressing members of the Parliamentary Press Corps on Friday, October 28, 2022, Mr Bagbin questioned why the government spent such a huge chunk on the collapsing the said banks.

“It is the focus of every country to ensure they are in control of the banking sector. So if we had Ghanaians with banks having challenges, it is incumbent on us to make them succeed. I think our colleagues in government erred in not seeing it that way.”

“They tried and ensured that Ghanaians making it in the sector lost out and instead of using about GH¢5 billion to help the banks to survive, we ended up losing GH¢25 billion, and we have still not been able to sanitize the system and there is still a lot of work to be done.”

Source: thenewsroomonline.com