GH¢4.6m depositors’ funds: Bawumia was spot on – BoG

The Bank of Ghana has stated that GH¢4.6 million of depositors’ funds have been saved at the end of the Financial Sector cleanup as rightly stated by Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.

These include deposits of banks, savings and loans companies, Microfinance and Microcredit and a remittance company.

The cleanup saw the revocation of the licenses of nine universal banks, 347 microfinance companies, 39 microcredit companies, 15 savings and loans companies, eight finance house companies, and two non-bank institutions.

According to the head of Banking Supervision at the Central Bank, Osei Gyese, the number of deposits saved during the cleanup amount to GH¢4.6 million.

“It is not just the banks; it is for the banks, savings and loans, microfinance, microcredit, finance house companies and non-bank institutions. When you put all together that is the amount of deposits saved,” Mr. Gyese told Starr Business.

There has been a debate over the figures by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta and Vice President Dr. Bawumia. While Mr. Ofori Atta put the figure at GH¢3.5 million, the Vice President said the figure is GH¢4.6 million.

Mr. Gyese giving clarification to the matter said, “It is a matter of reconciliation, if you take the banks, savings and loans and the finance houses and put the number of deposits together, you get about 3.51 million. But just as I indicated to you, we have other institutions; you have to bring all of them on board to get the 4.6 million.”

He added: “Maybe the Finance Minister was looking at the banks and the SDIs, so it depends on what you are talking about. It is just a matter of reconciliation. Put the number together, if you start from the finance minister’s 3.5 you can easily move to 4.6 by adding the other ones. So this should not create a problem.”