The President, Nana Akuffo Addo has described the state of the banking and financial sector as the most difficult problem the government encountered upon coming into office.
He said many of the banks were in distress and were being kept on an “unsustainable artificial life support” by the central bank.
According to him, the supervisory agencies were not performing their duties properly and the governance and management structures of many of the banks were clearly not adequate.
“if truth be told, many of our finance houses were running what can only be called glorified Ponzi scheme and has lured many depositors into these schemes”.
He said his government was in a desperate situation and urgent radical measures had to be taken to prevent the collapse of the entire financial and banking sector.
According to him, the Bank of Ghana under new a leadership intervened and has restored the sanity to the sector and in the process and have saved the banks, involving 4.6 million depositors’ funds.
“The government has had to find some twenty-one billion cedis (GH¢21 billion) to fund the cleaning up exercise”, he added.
The aforementioned exercise, according to him has enabled a more robust financial and banking service sector to emerge, which is essential to finance the rapid development of the nation.
In relation to customers who have their investments locked up by defunct financial institutions, Nana Akuffo Addo further reiterated Government’s commitment in the payment of all validated claims once the courts grant the liquidation orders for the remaining failed fund management companies.
