Bank of Ghana says the banking crisis commenced in 2015

According to the central bank, it realised in that year, most of the now-collapsed banks had serious liquidity challenges, a situation that threatened the financial sector.

BoG, hence, accused the 2015 leadership of doing nothing to solve the problems.

The Head of Banking Supervision at the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Mr Osei Gyasi made the revelation while speaking at the Joy Business Financial Services Forum on Tuesday, September 10, 2019.

He said, “I want to believe that the challenges that we have gone through, and we are going through did not start now. If you look back, as far back as 2015 and 2016 when we did the asset quality review, the signs were clear.”

“It came out clearly that about 9 banks had serious challenges and maybe that was the time we should have pursued some of the actions we have taken now,” he said, adding that, “Therefore, the regulator should have taken immediate steps to deal with the situation at the time they started.”

Background

The Bank of Ghana has embarked on various reforms in the finance sector since 2017.

The banks were reduced from thirty- six banks to 23 after the recapitalization requirement was implemented.

Bank of Ghana again announced the revocation of the licence of 23 savings and loans and finance house in the country.

Although the central bank embarked on the exercise, it did not mention how much that exercise will cost the state.

The previous clean-up of the banking, as well as the microfinance sectors, cost the state at least GH¢12 billion. But the central bank did not provide a figure regarding its latest exercise.

The BoG, hence, directed that depositors of institutions affected are to liaise with their receivers to retrieve their locked up funds.