The Honorary Vice President of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons has described the proposed new Bank of Ghana complex as too big, too expensive, and yet too inferior to merit the amount of money meant for its construction.

The Bank of Ghana’s proposed new complex will cost a whopping $250 million.

According to the governor of the central bank, Dr. Ernest Addison, the new complex which will serve as the BoG’s new headquarters is necessary to ensure the safety and security of the bank’s operations.

The bank says that a structural integrity assessment conducted on its current headquarters revealed that the building is no longer fit for purpose thus justifying the move.

However, the governor has come under sharp criticism from the Minority in Parliament and civil society organisations who have expressed disappointment with the Bank of Ghana's handling of financial matters, branding the institution as insensitive to the nation's plight.

They argue the new complex is excessive and unnecessary considering the huge losses the bank accrued in the 2022 fiscal year, and that the bank could have renovated its existing headquarters for a fraction of the cost.

Agreeing with the sentiments, Bright Simons, speaking on Newsfile Saturday said the cost of the project is bloated and does not merit its cost.

“I think the issue around the building, Mr. Kpebu was of the view that we have to compare it to similar projects and then try and strike a balance, which is very sensible, except that we have done that. When you look at the way the Bank of Ghana likes to use the benchmark cost per square meter number, they do that assuming the entire project is at a prestige high rise tower block so then you use the $2,700 and it looks reasonable except that it’s not. A lot of the project is not a high rise prestige tower block, there are a lot of car parks, and other ancillary services,” he said.

He explained that, the volume of the building is also too big taking into consideration the workforce size of the bank of Ghana and their recruitment habit.

“The other thing that is also important is that why does the Bank of Ghana need to more than increase their space by more than seven times? In 2003, total employees in the Bank of Ghana was just a little above 1,600. It took 13 years for that number to rise to 1,900. So in more than a decade and half or nearly a decade and half you’ve increased staff numbers by 300 people which is actually less than 20% in more than a decade and half.  

“Between 2016 and 2023, you’ve increased staff strength by about 300 from 1,900 thereabout to 2,200 thereabout. It’s very evident that it will take you more than 30 years by these projections to double your staff count. Why would you need to build something that is nearly seven times what your current needs are in terms of square meter area?”

Bright Simons said following the analysis, it is obvious the complex “is too big, too expensive especially because also the current revision takes away all the valuable things that they claim were essential because of the fact that they’re so over budget they decided to take out the data center, they decided to take out the currency processing center, they decided to take out all the specialized security systems. So what you have is far inferior from what you originally set out to do. And yet still it’s going to cost us nearly $400million if current rates of cost overruns continues. I don’t see the logic.”

He further stated that with some of the most important features of the complex stripped away to reduce cost, the building is now inferior and frivolous.

“Why would you build something that is not significantly better than what you have now in terms of features, valuable features and yet still it’s so bigger, so much bigger, and yet you don’t have the staff? Of course we could talk about the fact that they may rent places and all that but they claim it’s a national security site. So that will limit the amount of rentals that you can do etc. so I think that there’s a lot of analysis that can be done to show that not enough thought has gone into this,” he said.