The Co-ordinator of the Northern Rural Growth Programme (NRGP), Mr Roy Ayariga, has suggested to all district assemblies in the Northern Region to consider initiating the establishment of rural banks in their districts. According to him, the absence of rural banks in most districts in the three northern regions had become an obstacle to efforts being made to provide finance to smallholder farmers in the north. He said most farmer groups and small businesses were unable to access finance at the district level because there were no financial institutions in those areas. The co-ordinator was speaking at a forum in Tamale to sensitise farmers to the operations of the NRGP to build stronger partnerships with the farmers, who were representing various farmer groups in the Northern Region that had registered to benefit from the programme. The NRGP is a $104 million agric support project being co-funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), African Development Bank (ADB) and the Government of Ghana aimed at transforming agric in the three northern regions and parts of the Brong Ahafo Region. Mr Ayariga noted that the need for the rural banks had arisen because the big commercial banks had not established branches in the rural areas, a situation put the inhabitants of such areas at a disadvantage when they have to access credits for business. The Northern Region has a few rural banks which are concentrated in some parts of the region and they include; the Bonzali Rural Bank and Bangmarigu Community Bank and Borimanga Rural Bank. Most of the districts in the Eastern corridor of the region have no rural banks and none of the big banks have opened any branches in these areas. Mr Ayariga said this was not the situation in other regions, particularly the Upper East region, which had many rural banks to serve people in almost all the districts. He mentioned, for instance, the Bessfa Rural Bank, which serves Garu-Tempani and Bawku, the Toende Rural Bank, which serves Bawku West, the Nara Rural Bank, which serves Kassena Nankana, Bolga and Tongo and the Builsa Community Bank, which covers the Builsa district. The co-ordinator revealed that the NRGP was working with some financial non-governmental organisations to encourage them to open branches in rural areas. He appealed to the commercial banks, involved in micro-finance, such as the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB), Stanbic Bank and National Investment Bank (NIB) to open agencies in the various districts to enable the rural folk to have access to credit. Source: Daily Graphic