Access Bank Ghana has revealed plans to invest more in trading and exports as a move to improve its loan books in 2019.  

An overview of its 2018 report showed that Access bank Ghana fell short in its lending rate by 6%. This is partly blamed on the restructuring in the banking sector and its obligation in meeting the minimum capital requirement.

This was revealed by the Managing Director of Access Bank, Olumide Olatunji when the Bank took its turn at the GSE’s “facts behind the figure”.
“We are bringing a lot into the market to improve retail banking and loans. We see a lot of opportunities in the wholesale industry. Africa is about trade and so we are collaborating with international partners such as DEG to grow trade for German businesses importing and exporting out of Ghana,” he said.

He also mentioned the bank's intentions to narrow its attention on the Agriculture sector.  

Mr Olatunji said, “We have narrowed down We will be doing export discounting for companies that meet the risk assessment in that criteria.”

Growth

Real credit growth (excluding loans under receivership) was subdued in December 2018 compared with the previous year. 

The banking industry’s stock of gross loans and advances (both domestic and foreign) contracted by 12.0 per cent in real terms to GH¢36.54 billion in December 20183 compared with the 4.2 per cent contraction recorded in the same period last year.

Loans to the private sector (private enterprises and households) far outweighed loans to the public sector, accounting for 91.4 per cent of the total stock of loans as at end-December 2018, with the remaining 8.6 per cent going to the public sector. 

Growth in private sector credit (excluding the loans under receivership) declined by 11.7 per cent in December 2018, after recording a modest growth of 2.3 per cent in December 2017.

Banks’ credit stance on loans to households, however, continued to ease, resulting in a pickup in real growth of household credit to 28.6 per cent in December 2018 from 11.7 per cent in December 2017.

Household credit constituted 22.9 per cent of the stock of total credit outstanding as at end-December 2018, while credit to private enterprises accounted for 66.3 per cent.