The Deputy Wenchi Constituency Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Uthman Yakubu Bamba, has suggested the establishment of a bank that will focus on rural development.

According to him, this will help people from the countryside to improve their lot.

"A bank like that, apart from helping to improve the quality of life of the people, will also hasten the pace of development in rural communities.

Speaking with JoyNews in Sunyani, Mr Yakubu argued that the bank for rural development will stem the rural-urban migration among the youth since they will get the needed social amenities and infrastructure to make life in the rural communities worthwhile.

“In India, the government has set up such a bank purely to speed up the development of its rural communities and make life comfortable for rural dwellers, so travelling to the urban areas to seek non-existent jobs is not attractive to the people,” he indicated.

He added that such a bank has also been used in India for the disbursement and monitoring of the government's micro-credit for the people.

He suggested that the initiative could easily be replicated in Ghana instead of channelling such facilities through the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) for disbursement.

Mr Yakubu stated, “The establishment of the Bank for Rural Development in Ghana will also eliminate the abuse of micro-credit facilities the government has offered to the people”.

He suggested that the government could also make an allocation in the budget for micro-credit and channel it through the rural and community banks for the people to access and invest in ventures for the benefit of all.

The Deputy Wenchi Constituency Secretary for the NDC encouraged rural banks to regularly select key staff members to gain external exposure in micro-finance in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, where micro-finance initiatives have been highly successful, resulting in poverty reduction in those countries.

"If you want to succeed as rural banks in business while serving the interest of the rural people, internal and external capacity building in micro-finance for your staff members is necessary," he stressed.