Banks have recovered swiftly, to support fight against Coronavirus – Andani

The President of the Ghana Bankers Association, Alhassan Andani says the banking industry has recovered swiftly from the deep challenges experienced over a year ago.

According to him, majority of the indicators including improvement in liquidity and non-performing loan ratios now shows that the banking industry is moving in the right direction.

This he says has been captured in the 2019 financial statements of the banks that some have published so far in the dailies.

“The 2019 results which most of us have already published and you will see in the newspapers shortly is being a resounding success; whether it is confidence in the financial services sector as evidence by clients coming to leave monies deposits with banks have gone up significantly across board, whether it is confidence in the sense that the real sector feel that they can be supported by banks as evidence by our loans and advances portfolio that has gone up significantly, whether it is evidence by governance and risk discipline”, he told PMS Express on Joy TV.

Outlining further Mr. Andani who is the Managing Director of Stanbic Bank Ghana said: “If you look at all the critical risk factors, if you look at the major performance indicators - customers confidence in depositors, customer confidence in absorbing risk assets and banks willingness to do so, it is happening at a much faster and better rate.”

“We are deeply grateful for the pain that we’ve gone through. We grateful particularly for the pain that the Ghanaian public have gone through.”

Mr. Andani also spoke on the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the Ghanaian financial sector and the economy as a whole.

According to him, the banks will support the government to keep the economy running in these difficult times, prioritizing health and agriculture.

“We all have the disaster planning scenarios that says that when this happens this will happen; we have a disaster planning for this situation like this. But the question is, how long will this go or whether our worst-case scenarios can play out or is it going to play out even more severe?

“At the moment, we will support health and health delivery, ensure that we consolidate payments and get people wherever they are keeping safe at home, they can get critical payments and critical essentials to them.”