President Akufo-Addo (left) welcoming Jose Vinals, Group Chairman, Standard Chartered Bank to the Jubilee House. Picture by Gifty Ama Lawson
Group Chairman of Standard Chartered Bank (Global), Jose Vinals, has expressed confidence in the country’s economy.
“We are confident that working hard and in joint manner between the government and the private sector, Ghana will be out of this situation and will embark on a growth path that it had before COVID-19 and other crises that hit the country, region and the world,” he noted.
This was when Vinals, who until his appointment as Group Chairman of the bank was the Financial Counselor and also in charge of the Capital Markets division of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), paid a courtesy call on President Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House yesterday.
Vinals, who was in the company of the Chief Executive of Standard Chartered Bank Ghana (SCB) PLC, Mansa Nettey and the Board Chairman of the bank in the country, Ebenezer Asante, described his visit to Ghana “as reconfirmations of our support and also a vote of confidence on Ghana’s future.”
He expressed the bank’s strong commitment to Ghana because it had a positive view on the economic future of the country.
Digitalisation
So far, he said SCB has identified great opportunities in the digitalisation agenda being pursued by the government together with the sustainability agenda, and that the bank was committed to investing in the opportunities set by digitilisation and sustainability.
“We have been making investments to launch very soon a platform for the financing of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, which I think can be quite transformational,” he added.
Vinals has been nominated by the Secretary General of the United Nations to co-chair the Global Alliance of Private Investors for Development whose task is to put together financial solutions to scale up financing for the Sustainable Development Goals towards emerging markets and developing economies.
He is therefore working closely with many private sector partners, multilateral development banks and with the United Nations in trying to push forward on sustainability endeavours.
On his part, President Akufo-Addo wished the new Group Chairman of SCB well in his new role and expressed the hope that together with government and other multilateral agencies, they will help the country come out of the woods.
By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent