10-year capital market master plan timely - Ken Ofori-Atta

• Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta has expressed optimism about the introduction of the master plan

• He believes the master plan is coming in at a point where the nation is making progress with its development plans

• He noted that the country will also be investing about $200 million in the establishment of the new development bank

Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta has stated that the Securities and Exchange Commission's master plan on diversifying the capital market is timely and a step in the right direction, as the establishment of a new development bank is in progress.

According to the minister, this will help boost the country’s economy and enhance development since the capital market will now have a master plan to ensure its operations.

Speaking at the launch of the 10-year capital market master plan by SEC, the minister said the initiative is timely and critical to post COVID-19 recovery, as it will play a key role in the soon-to-be-launched national development bank.

“The capital market master plan to launch and implementation in a timely and welcoming intervention in Ghana’s financial services sector. As you’ve realized, we are also looking forward to launching the Development Bank of Ghana, with the support of World Banks, EID and Ghana putting its own $200 million dollars into it to begin to bridge this gap and to be able to support capital banks and other companies that will lead to the facilitation of this.

The key issue here is for development banks to raise money in the capital market and therefore the capital market master plan comes in handy at this time,” he said.

Meanwhile, last Wednesday, May 19, 2021, Ghana secured €170 million from the European Development Bank to support the establishment of a national development bank in Ghana and this has received some backlash, with experts saying it is a misplaced priority.

According to a former minister of Finance, Seth Terkper, the country should rather invest more in the already existing development banks like the Agriculture Development Bank and the National Investment Bank.

He said this while speaking in an interview with GhanaWeb’s Amos Ekow Coffie.

“They should have given the money to NIB, it was established as our investment bank by Nkrumah, there is no need for any new development bank. It is duplication, they only making NIB a commercial brand, the NIB was never meant to be a commercial brand, it is just like Agriculture Development Bank, and that is a commercial bank for Agric, but NIB was an investment bank so what is the difference between an investment bank and a development bank?” he said.