Banking Consultant, Dr. Richmond Atuahene, says the domestic debt exchange programme has shown how much lazy banking banks in Ghana have been conducting.

According to him, most banks had given in to the false assumption that government securities were risk-free, thus had over-indulged in lending to the government beyond their single obligor limit.

He noted that the Central Bank which was to raise red flags over the behavior had themselves been heavily indulging in same behavior.

This, he says, has left many a bank at risk of insolvency as a result of the debt exchange programme.

“As I speak to you a bank had a bond of 9billion as against a loan portfolio of 4 billion, twice the bonds because when I said it about two years ago in my delivery at Kempinski I said we’re doing what we call lazy banking.

“Lazy banking in the sense that we want easy way out of banking, buy government bonds, buy treasury bills, declare good profit, declare good income, pay good dividend, but that is not banking. That is no banking. That is not how the British colonial masters taught us about banking. Banking, the regulation must be tough for both investments and as well as credit facility, but that was mute.

“So the banks find it an easy way of going. And let me tell you a secret, some of the banks from other jurisdiction, you know some of them nearly exited when they saw these bonds, they called their board members and told them ‘look the way you people are going there we’re afraid of it’.

“Some of them warned them, the mother companies warned some of the banks here. But the question is that because the enabling environment has been created for easy banking and lazy banking we ended up [here],” he said.