This is coming after an initial validation and payment of some GHC5billion to customers.
The Ghanaian government has said that the receiver of the defunct Microfinance companies and savings and loans firms will complete the second level of validation processes to pay all customers whose funds were locked up after the Bank of Ghana revoked the licenses of the institutions.
The Bank of Ghana (BoG) revoked the licenses of 347 microfinance companies and 23 savings and loans companies. This was part of efforts to clean the financial sector.
At a press briefing, the Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, said they would complete the second level of validation
by the end of May for payment to commence.
“Now based on total cash payments to be made by the end of the depositor payment exercise, it is expected that a population of individual depositors numbering about 297,000 whose claims have been validated and accepted in the resolution of the aforementioned groups of companies and ultimately not less than 290,000, that is about 98% in number of individual payments, will be fully paid in cash.”
“The remaining 2% of individual depositor claims will be paid by a combination of cash and bonds. So here are the next steps of payments. They are first of all concluding the depositor payments process and the key next step to be undertaken include the conclusion of the final second validation of that 340 million, and payments made accordingly. They expect that by the end of May we would be done with that one,” he added.
He added that there are challenges with the books and records of some organizations and so they are processing rules for some further investigations.
The financial sector clean-up started in August 2017. This led to the collapse of nine universal banks, 347 microfinance companies, 39 microcredit companies or money lenders, 15 savings and loans companies, eight finance house companies, two non-bank financial institutions, and 53 Fund Management firms.