Cassiel Ato Forson
The ranking member on the Finance Committee of Parliament, Cassiel Ato Forson, has questioned the ‘pick and choose’ policy adopted by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) under the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in saving private distressed banks in the country.
A former Deputy Minister of Finance, Mr Forson said as a former non-executive director of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), he was aware of a number of private banks that were in serious financial distress, but were supported to be on their own.
He could not fathom why government, through the BoG, could condemn uniBank, which is the largest private bank with huge assets.
Addressing the parliamentary press corps in yesterday, the MP said he would not rule out pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the government to take over uniBank, which was doing far better than other private banks in the system.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament for Ajumako/Enyan/Essiam in the Central region, said the collapse of private banks in the country under the present administration was very worrying, stressing that it could be a way of the BoG to take over indigenous private banks and eventually hand them over to foreign investors.
“The government, which has supervisory role over the BoG, has a responsibility to ensure that proper supervision is carried out to avoid these situations but the government has failed to do that,” he said
He said that uniBank, which is bigger than defunct Capital Bank and UT Bank put together, could threaten the taxpayer with a whopping debt of GH¢4 billion because the two smaller banks left a debt of GH¢2 billion for the Ghanaian taxpayer and the government to pay.
The ranking member challenged the government to make public the full details of what went wrong administratively because the trend does not tell a good story for the country.
Chairman of the Finance Committee and NPP MP for New Juaben, Dr Mark Assibey-Yeboah, who also spoke on the same matter in parliament, highly commended the Bank of Ghana for taking that bold initiative to save the uniBank from total collapse because of bad management practices by the previous administrators.
He said since August 2016, uniBank has been in distress as result of maladministration and exposure to a lot of subsidiaries.
“It is important for the BoG to appoint a new administrator to manage the bank at least for the next six months to make sure the numerous losses are sealed and for the bank to be totally independent again,” chairman of the Finance Committee said.
By Thomas Fosu Jnr