Banks have demonstrated that they are determined to build the industry back to its pre-Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) financial soundness and firmly restore it to the path of growth and profitability.

According to the 2023 PwC Ghana Banking Survey, financial performance data reported in the first quarter of 2023 partially confirms that this has started.

They, however, recognise that they would need to make some internal improvements to strengthen their risk shields and enhance their risk agility, and help them to withstand future shocks that are similar to the DDEP in effect.

While they consider the investments to make to increase their resilience, bank executives highlighted a few key actions they would like to see the government, through its economic managers and the industry’s regulator, do to complement their own efforts.

These include the need for the government to work towards and achieve a rapid implementation of the Ghana Financial Stability Fund as well as move quickly and rigorously to implement policies to bring the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio to within sustainable levels.

The rest are good macroeconomic and macro-financial sector management to help bring down interest rates, inflation, and currency depreciation to within levels that encourage bank commercial lending to the real economy to fuel economic growth.

Finally, aside the Bank of Ghana that is the industry’s regulator, the Ministry of Finance should establish a permanent framework to facilitate regular or periodic dialogue with the banking sector.

The survey revealed the impact of the DDEP on the performance of Ghanaian banks in 2022, highlights how bank executives remain optimistic about their future performance and acknowledges the need to do things differently in future.