Ray Sowah
Management and Board of the Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) have dismissed media reports that the bank is deceitfully delaying the publication of its audited financial statements and annual report.
According to the bank, the publication in the media was “misleading.”
It noted that the headline of the story “GCB Bank, stop the deception and publish your audited financial statements and annual report” was inappropriate, adding that “the word deception connote a willful desire to mislead and to deceive.”
In a statement, GCB explained that the condensed, consolidated and separate financial statements published on 31st May, 2018 were prepared in accordance with guidelines issued by the Bank of Ghana (BoG).
“These have not in any way been described as the full audited financial statements of the bank,” it said, adding that there were differences between condensed and full audited financial statements and the annual audited financial statements.
The condensed set of financial statements, it said, was meant to present at a high level, salient features of the operational results of an entity whilst the audited financial statements present the full report of an entity’s operations.
The publication of financial statements in the newspapers, it explained, “is a requirement under the Banks and Specialized Deposit-taking Institutions Act 2016 (Act 930), and the regulator, Bank of Ghana, stipulates the manner in which financial statements should be presented.”
GCB further disclosed that “the condensed consolidated and separate financial statements published by GCB Bank are in accordance with the regulator’s requirements.”
It noted that “the full set of annual financial statements have and will always be published in accordance with the applicable financial reporting framework and in a manner required by the IFRS, Companies Code 1963 Act 179 and Banks and Specialized Deposit-taking Institutions Act 2016 (Act 930).”
“GCB Bank did not under any circumstances rush to publish the condensed consolidated and separate financial statements,” the statement pointed out.
It admitted that “there were delays in meeting the statutory deadline but the bank sought relevant approvals from the Central Bank, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and published the financial statements as soon as these became available.”
It added that the condensed consolidated and separate financial statements are a set of summaries or abridged financial statements.
In other words, it said, it is a summary of the audited annual financial statements with minimal disclosures, and there was the need to differentiate these for the benefit of users.
“The reference to the auditor’s report being qualified is unfortunate and misplaced,” the bank said.
“There are reasons and circumstances that form the basis on which an audit report is qualified. Unfortunately, the release interpreted the reference to a document as a qualification. Indeed the audit opinion issued on the financial statements of the bank for the year ended 2017 was unmodified.”
“We wish to state unequivocally that the bank has complied with what is expected by the law and regulations,” the bank said.
By Melvin Tarlue