Incompetent Akufo-Addo, Bawumia spent GHS23bn to collapse banks – Adongo

It was wrong for Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia to blame former President John Dramani Mahama for the circumstances that led to the recent collapse of some local banks, Mr Isaac Adongo, Bolga Central MP, has said.

Dr Bawumia, a few days ago, accused Mr Mahama of superintending the rot in the banks without acting to deal with the problem.

The Vice-President also suggested that Mr Mahama did not have ample understanding of the banking sector.

Dr Bawumia made the comments after, Mr Mahama, in a Facebook Live interaction with Ghanaians, said the revocation of the licences of nine local banks and over 400 microfinance finance institutions, savings and loans companies, as well as finance houses, was a national threat.

According to Dr Bawumia, the setup of a committee by the former President to study and analyse the current economic situation and give pragmatic steps makes it obvious that he has little understanding of the banking sector.

He said: "Has the former president not taken the trouble to learn from the experiences of countries all over the world in financial crisis management? Obviously not! Hence his admission that he has set up a policy working group on finance and economy that is now studying and analysing the situation with a view to coming up pragmatic steps".

However, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, 3 September 2019, Mr Adongo said: "Ghanaians are struggling to come to terms as to how the badly planned and poor implementation of a minimum capital regime, has virtually destroyed Ghana’s financial sector".

"There are unanswered questions with regard to how we spent GHS23 billion of taxpayers' money just to collapse financial institutions, create massive unemployment and turn entrepreneurs into idle hands.

"Why would the government be ready to borrow GHS14 billion to close down banks and a further GHS7 billion to close down savings and loans companies as well as GHS2 billion to shut down microfinance companies but was not ready to use a fraction of this amount to pay government’s debts to contractors, which largely accounted for the slide into insolvency of several cases of the collapsed banks?"

"The Ghanaian taxpayer would have been spared the high cost of this chaotic reform with Bank of Ghana if the Bank of Ghana had listened and followed the reform programme initiated by the NDC”, Mr Adongo asserted.

"Unfortunately, instead of answers, the Vice-President has adopted to his infamous deceptive traits of looking elsewhere to blame for [his] and the president’s incompetent handling of what has become a full-blown crisis.

"His attempt to blame the flag bearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for the collapse of the banks is laughable.

"It was this same Dr Bawmuia who inaugurated Construction Bank (One of the collapsed banks) in 2017 after the bank was issued with the final licence by the current Governor Dr Ernest Adison", the opposition MP said.