Awutu-Beraku (C/R), April 30, - The decline in interest-driven income places on various financial institutions the need to be more proactive in ensuring that loans granted to customers were effectively monitored and recovered.
Banks must ensure that beneficiaries of loans channelled their loans into areas and activities, which would create wealth, ensure development, create access to employment, and generate a plethora of economic activity, which would leap-frog the country into the category of being counted as a middle level economy. Mr. Richard Mettle Addo, Head of the training department of the ARB APEX Bank Limited, gave the advice at the 17th annual shareholders meeting of the Awutu Emasa Rural Bank, at Awutu-Beraku in the Central Region.
He said the current financial situation within the framework of banking operations offers serious challenges to all financial institutions.
Mr. Addo said for a very long time most financial institutions were content with placing all their investments in treasury bills and other government papers as returns on such investments were very high, risk-free and easily determinable realizable.
Such investments Mr. Addo further stated, were done to the disadvantage of the assistance, which should have gone to promote agriculture, fishing and small-scale industries in the communities within which rural and community banks were located.
He said even though this phenomenon guaranteed profitability and ensured the sustenance of most rural and community banks, it did not enhance development in rural communities as expected. Mr. Addo charged rural and community banks to put in place the right policy guidelines to enable them to get to where they need to be. He stressed the need for Boards of various rural and community banks to be sensitive to the felt needs of communities within which they operate and offer directional leadership to promote the general well-being of people in the catchment areas of rural and community banks.
Mr. Addo reiterated ARB APEX Bank's plans to assist rural and community banks offer their workers the requisite training in various aspects of banking to enable them to function effectively and efficiently.
He praised the Board and Management of the Awutu Emasa Rural Bank for their good performance in the 2005 operational period which ranks the bank among the 100 best rural and community banks in the country and advised them to keep it up.
In his annual report, Mr. Abraham K. Larbie, the out-going Board Chairman, disclosed that the bank made a profit before tax, of 288,721,000 cedis last year, as against 139,435,000 cedis it chalked in 2004.
According to Mr. Larbie, the bank's total assets also leaped from 9,265,631,000 in 2004 operational period, to 11,428,031,000 in 2005. He advised all defaulting customers of the bank to pay back loans granted them to avoid prosecution. 30 April 06
