The Banking Supervision Department of the Bank of Ghana will be issuing new directives to regulate the traditional micro-finance industry later this month. Corporate firms and individuals in the susu collection business would be mandated to register with the Central Bank and the Ghana Co-operative Susu Collectors’ Association respectively. The association had been advocating for an Apex status to regulate susu activities, similar to what pertains in the rural banking sector. The Central Bank has however opted to separate the companies and individual susu collectors for effective supervision. Members of the Susu collectors association in the Ashanti region have been discussing new developments in the sector at their 17th Annual General Meeting in Kumasi. National President of the association, Emmanuel Aboagye-Manu expects the new arrangement to instill sanity in the sector even though he had wished all susu operations were under one regulatory body. He told Luv Biz Report “the only problem we’re having is the corporate bodies which we would have wished were under us; and another school of thought is saying that though they [corporate firms] can be licensed by the Bank of Ghana, all susu collection should be under GSCA”. Over 1,500 businesses are presently operating under the susu collectors association. Operators of the traditional microfinance industry are presently governed by a self-regulatory framework, adopted with the institutional support of the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry. Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh/Luv Fm/Ghana