Dr Ernest Addison, BoG Governor
Twenty-two commercial banks have so far met the GH¢400 million capital requirement of the Bank of Ghana (BoG).
The Central Bank is expected to officially announce the banks soon, 16 of whom met the requirement before the December 31, 2018 deadline through their own initiatives.
These include Access Bank Ghana Limited, Barclays Bank Ghana Limited, CAL Bank Limited, Consolidated Bank, Ecobank Ghana Limited, FBNBank Ghana Limited, Fidelity Bank Limited, First National Bank Ghana Limited (FNB), Republic Bank Ghana Limited, GCB Bank Limited, Guaranty Trust Bank Ghana Limited (GTBank), Society Generale Ghana Limited, Stanbic Bank Ghana Limited, Standard Chartered Bank Ghana, United Bank for Africa Ghana Limited (UBA) and Zenith Bank Ghana Limited.
The other six banks are expected to be supported with some GH¢2 billion government-backed arrangement by private investors to be administered by Ghana Amalgamated Trust Limited (GAT), a special purpose vehicle (SPV) incorporated on December 17, last year.
They include ADB Bank, National Investment Bank (NIB), Prudential Bank, Universal Merchant Bank Limited (UMB), Heritage Bank Limited and OmniBank Limited.
The funds are expected to reach them by March this year.
GAT would offer such bailout by pooling resources from the capital market through the issue of bond to be availed to foreign and domestic investors, and also the use of domestic pension funds.
The bond would be issued based on the assets of the six banks. Also, the amount of money needed by any of the six banks to recapitalise would be exchanged for some of their shares to Government through GAT under the special rescue parcel, among others.
There are also discussions between Energy Commercial Bank Ghana Limited and First Atlantic Bank Limited for a possible merger while OmniBank and Sahel Sahara Bank are also meeting over same.
First National Bank Ghana Limited (FNB) is expected to adopt GHL Bank, while Stanbic Bank Ghana Limited has absorbed customers of Bank of Baroda.
In the case of Bank of Africa Ghana (BoA) Limited, GN Bank Limited and Premium Bank Limited, their status is yet to be ascertained by the BoG.
By Samuel Boadi