Ernest Addison is being controlled – Isaac Adongo

Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central constituency, Upper East region, Isaac Adongo, has accused Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Ernest Addison, of lacking a mind of his own, calling him a “robot regulatory machine.”

The accusation was made on the premise of the closure of five banks because of their inability to meet capital requirements, proposed by the Bank of Ghana.

The banks, which have now been merged into the Consolidated Bank of Ghana (CBG), are BEIGE, Sovereign, Construction, UniBank and Royal Bank.

“He Addison is the reason why we are where we are. He is behaving like a robotic regulatory machine. Somebody is sitting somewhere and when they plug him to say something, he’ll say,” he said of the Central Bank Governor’s decisions. “Otherwise, how can recapitalization of banks become a death license to our banks?” he quizzed further.

The MP claimed that the government, through the finance ministry was on a quest to trim lean the number of local banks in the country, while allowing the foreign banks the luxury of more numbers.

“The Minister of Finance has made us know why what is happening is happening. The banks are many. You say we should not have less than five local banks. The foreign banks are seventeen and have all met the minimum capital requirement. As for the local banks, we should be just five,” he stated, stemming his position in what he claims to have been said a few days ago by Finance minister, Ken Ofori Atta.

He described Mr. Ofori-Atta as a clueless man who is always in white and knows no way to implement the change he is always preaching. In his words, “With this, one man just appeared recently wearing white shirts everywhere and he said that must change. And he doesn’t even have a decent way of doing it.”

He was referring to measures, or the lack thereof, by the Finance Ministry to support local banks to limit the proliferation of foreign ones.

Mr Adongo was speaking at a public forum organised by Progressive Alliance Media Communications (PAMC) on the banking crisis.