Isaac Adongo exposes government’s lies on banking clean-up

Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central constituency Isaac Adongo has questioned the sincerity of government and its allied agencies in the management of the economy of the country.

According to him, claims by Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia to the effect that GH¢4billion was injected into the banking sector after recapitalisation of the sector are untrue.

While supporting his argument with data from the PricewaterhouseCoopers Ghana, the entity which conducted a recent banking sector survey, Isaac Adongo in his latest epistle on the banking sector clean up copied Mynewsgh.com said “PwC, which conducted a survey with Bank Executives found that the so called recapitalisation exercise, brought in only GH¢1.5 billion in fresh capital.

However, Dr Bawumia recently reported that the same recapitalisation injected GH¢4bn in fresh capital into the banking sector. The Vice President actually said this at a Town Hall Meeting of the Economic Management Team in April this year, where he embellished the facts in accounting for his stewardship in government”.

He further noted that out of the 19 banks that were covered by the survey, some banks that did not participate in the survey exercise have not received any fresh capital injection.

“The PwC survey covered 19 banks but before Dr Bawumia finds solace in that, let’s ask which banks didn’t participate?

PwC listed the banks that didn’t participate as UMB, NIB, Consolidated Bank and Omnic-BSIC Bank.

Now, three of those “absentee banks”, (UMB, NIB and Omni-BSIC) are some of the GAT Banks that have been “recapitalised by mouth”. This is because, not a single pesewa has actually gone into any of them in the name of recapitalisation.

Consolidated Bank, which is the fourth, was recapitalised with GH¢450m

Thus, if we add that to the GHS1.5 billion that the PwC survey found to have been fresh capital injection, we will get GH¢1.95 billion, not even half of Walewale Adam Smith’s concocted GHS4 billion fresh injection”.

Hon Adongo further argued that contrary to claims that the recapitalisation and clean up exercise has made the banking sector capitalised and stronger, a survey by Pwc reveals that not much has been achieved.

“Now that PwC has settled the issue on how much the recapitalisation yielded in fresh capital, I hope the Bank of Ghana, the Ministry of Finance and Dr Bawumia will revise their notes and honorably admit that the exercise did less to make the sector capitalised contrary to what they have been telling Ghanaians. It is worth underscoring the fact that the GH¢1.5 billion fresh capital injection, came at the cost of Dr Bawumia and Nana Addo collapsing 9 banks, 23 savings and loans companies, 347 microfinance companies and wasting over GH¢23 billion of taxpayers’ money. It also led to the wiping off of the SEC-regulated finance industry” he added.

In the view of the outspoken legislator, Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has fallen short of being a credible source of reference on matters of the economy.

“Let me say that, we will be doing this country, its experts and scholars, a very great disservice if we allow falsehood to go unchallenged.

This is because, ordinarily, a Vice President by virtue of his position in the economic management is supposed to be a credible source of reference for our scholars.

Going forward, we urge every scholar and or civil society fellow who wishes to reference Dr Bawumia to “fact-check” same before inadvertently proceeding to be a conduit for the perpetration falsehood.