Bank of Ghana to explore new ways to improve SME credit access

The Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Matilda Asante-Asiedu, says the central bank will explore ways to amend existing financial regulations as part of efforts to address a major challenge facing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Speaking at the Distinguished Digital Finance Lecture on Monday, August 17, 2026, she said Ghana had developed strong digital payment systems but had not built equally effective credit systems.

“We have built extraordinary payment rails; but we have not yet built equally extraordinary credit rails,” she said.

Asante-Asiedu noted that while an SME can receive money through Ghana’s instant payment system within seconds, the same business could wait months to secure a working-capital loan.

She said lenders were also not making sufficient use of financial information generated through digital transactions.

According to her, Ghana’s SME financing gap is estimated at about US$4.8 billion annually, describing the shortfall as one of the major constraints to economic growth.

Asante-Asiedu said Ghana does not necessarily lack funds for businesses, but rather faces challenges with the structure of its financial system.

“Ghana does not have a capital shortage. It has an architecture problem,” she stated.

She argued that the traditional reliance on land, buildings, equipment and financial assets as collateral was no longer sufficient to meet the financing needs of many businesses.

She cited confirmed purchase orders, export orders and long-term service agreements as examples of alternative assets that could demonstrate a business’s future cash flows.

“A business trading well, holding a signed contract with a defined payment date, should not be turned away simply because the value it has built sits in a receivable rather than a title,” she said.

She explained that the challenge was not only whether banks were willing to consider such information, but also whether existing legal and financial regulations allowed lenders to use those assets when assessing loan applications.

The Second Deputy Governor also urged financial institutions to make greater use of mobile money and other digital payment records when assessing borrowers.

She said such records could provide information about an individual’s income, savings habits, business activity and ability to repay loans.

“That is not background information; it is a credit record. We have simply not built the habit of reading it as such,” she said.

She cited the example of a market woman who had actively used mobile money for two years and maintained a regular savings pattern, saying such transaction data could provide lenders with useful information about her creditworthiness.

Asante-Asiedu said closing the SME financing gap would be an important measure of the success of efforts to reform Ghana’s financial system.

She said the success of digital finance frameworks should not be measured only by the number of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) created, but by whether businesses actually receive more credit because lenders can access and understand their financial records.

She further argued that digital financial inclusion should go beyond simply having a bank account or mobile money wallet.

“The next standard for inclusion in this country should be whether people can access credit, insurance and investment on fair terms when they need to,” she said.

ANAS/MA