Government has ruled out the creation of a new financial institution despite proposing the establishment of a new National Development Bank.

Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta in the 2018 budget announced the launch of a National Development Bank with the capacity of mobilising private capital towards agricultural and industrial transformation, among others.

According to him, a task force has been set up to develop a roadmap for the establishment of a bank JoyBusiness understands could have a seed capital of $500 million.

However, this proposal has not gone down with former Trade Minister, Ekwow Spio-Gabrah and Former Deputy Finance Minister, Kweku Ricketts-Hagan.

They have described it the decision an unnecessary creation, considering that there are already existing banks that government has significant holding that it can use to execute this plan.

They also argued that it would be a waste of resources when government can fall on existing financial institutions.  

But speaking to JoyBusiness, Deputy Minister of Energy, Abena Osei-Asare, noted that government does not have any intention of establishing a new bank.

“The fact that we said we are coming up with a development bank doesn’t mean it’s a new bank,” he said.

Asked whether government is working to merge two banks which have a significant shareholding in the creation of this development bank, the minister responded, “that is also very possible”.

“We are looking more at consolidation and it is possible that some banks might consolidate to form the National Development Bank or anything is possible.

"But what we are making available is the funds and we are going to use the right channel to make these funds available to enable businesses to also take off”, the Deputy Energy Minister added.