President Nana Akufo-Addo
President Nana Akufo-Addo has set new goals for the Bank of Ghana (BoG) which celebrated its 60th anniversary last Friday.
President Akufo-Addo, who was the special guest of honour at the event, commended them for a good work done over the years and challenged them to achieve the new set of goals.
The president called on the bank to lower the cost of funds to ensure increased investment, weed out unlicensed institutions to engender confidence in the financial system, protect the integrity of the payment system in the country, protect the safety of deposits, broaden and deepen access to banking to many rural dwellers.
He also stressed the need to “entrench reputation and credibility in the financial system because a weak banking system undermines growth, and on this basis, the current weaknesses in our banking sector need to be addressed forcefully to minimize any adverse financial consequences to unsuspecting savers and their spill-over effects on the economy.”
Noting that a roadmap for addressing weaknesses in the banking sector in the country was being implemented, Nana Akufo-Addo urged the nation’s Central Bank to remain committed to the process.
The President took the opportunity to commend the bank for intervening decisively in the crisis involving UT Bank and Capital Bank, saying “it demonstrates your preparedness to act in a manner worthy of a responsible central bank of a praiseworthy regulator. I am confident that you have the support of the nation.”
At age 60, whether it is in the control of the quantity of money, in managing interest rates, in safeguarding the domestic and external value of the cedi or in ensuring the soundness of the financial system, the Bank of Ghana must reflect soberly on its experiences, the good times and the hard times, take lessons from the challenging times, and focus on working to promote confidence in the economy, and instill discipline in the oversight responsibilities of the financial sector.”
“I urge the bank and by extension the Ministry of Finance to put in place policies that are both internally and externally consistent,” he declared.
Under his leadership, President Akufo-Addo said, “I insist that there must be greater fiscal and monetary policy coordination to promote and sustain macroeconomic stability, this is the only way by which we will enable the private sector to flourish and create the needed jobs within the economy.”
“We, that is the government and the people of Ghana, have high hopes that the Bank of Ghana, given its expertise and experience, will roll out coherent monetary policies that would create the enabling environment for the rapid transformation of the Ghanaian economy. This is what we expect of the Central Bank,” he charged.
Government reiterated its commitment to the path of fiscal consolidation.
“We must do this so that the Bank of Ghana can concentrate on what it was set up to do,” the President said.
To this end, he said “we are committing by statute to ensure that the overall government fiscal deficit remains within a reasonable band of between 3 and 5 percent, beginning in 2018. We are also working hard to find a solution to the huge energy sector-related debt exposures that threaten the stability of the country’s banking system.”
By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent