Banking sector intervention reckless – Suhuyini

Member of Parliament for the Tamale North Constituency Alhassan Suhuyini Sayibu has described as “reckless” the banking sector clean-up carried out by the Bank of Ghana.

“We would have done this banking sector clean-up in a different way to secure jobs,” he insisted.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP was speaking on TV3’s New Day on Friday, November 22 when he shared the sentiments.

The banking sector underwent a two-year clean-up engineered by the Bank of Ghana.

The exercise led to the revocation of licenses of some major indigenous banks with some having their management ceded to others.

Consolidated Bank of Ghana (CBG) was consequently founded in 2018 to take over the operations of five banks namely Beige Bank, Royal Bank, Construction Bank, uniBank and Sovereign Bank.

The lawmaker said the NDC government was aware of the problems in the banking sector and took steps to clean it up.

He said an adequacy audit was proposed while the Bank of Ghana Act was amended as part of efforts to strengthen the sector.

But he said the current government came and virtually rendered many jobless by the clean-up.

He said theirs “wouldn’t have been as traumatic as this has been”.

“Most of the jobs would have been saved and local businesses would have been protected.”

But a member of the government, George Ayisi, who serves as Communications Director of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), said the books of most of the bank were “toxic”.

He noted that the previous government gave a lifeline to the banks.

“All [those] banks would have gone down under if we didn’t do this intervention.”

The clean-up of the sector came to an end on Friday, November 8 with the revocation of licenses of 53 investment firms.

Government has announced the establishment of the National Development Bank in 2020 as the latest addition to the sector.