Employ competent personnel to run National Development Bank – Prof. Quartey

An Economics Professor at the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER), Peter Quartey has stressed the need for the establishment of the National Development Bank (NDB) to be fused with competent personnel employed to manage the business operations of the bank.

His comments after the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, disclosed the NDB will in July this year commence its operations.

But Prof. Quartey believes the establishment of the bank will only yield positive results should government fail to apply the right mechanisms and personnel to effectively run the bank.

“The key thing is that the money has been found, what I will recommend is finding the right people to manage this bank. If it is run as a business, Ghana will be in a better place but if we take it as business as usual, and we don’t hire the competent and right people then it will be difficult to manage, loans will be made, but we will not be able to recover these loans so the National Development Bank is something that I support, however, it should be run by competent people when that is done we will certainly reap the long term benefits”.

Prof Quartey said this in an interaction with Citi Business News monitored by GhanaWeb.

The Akufo-Addo government is 2018 made the announcement to establish a National Development Bank as part of efforts to refinance credit to critical sectors operating especially in the agriculture industry.

Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta told Parliament the bank will serve as wholesale entity that will offer guarantee investment instruments in order to woo in universal banks to lend to critical growth sectors.

So far, government says it has been able to raise the required seed capital of over US$500 million dollars for the establishment of the National Development Bank.