Bank of Ghana (BoG) has rejected suggestions of being selective in dealing with banks said to be in financial “distress”.
This is in reaction to reports that the regulator has not been fair in dealing with all the “troubled” banks.
Background
A report by the Bank of Ghana last year showed that nine commercial banks were in “financial distress”.
Out of these banks, two banks – UT and Capital Bank have gone down, while the Bank of Ghana has appointed accounting firm KPMG to take over the management of Unibank.
Bank of Ghana’s response
Speaking in an exclusive interview with JoyBusiness, the new Head of Banking Supervision, Osei Gyasi said every action that they had taken has been guided by strict regulatory guidance.
He said, “we don’t have a different regulatory framework for different banks, we use a common framework and supervisory processes in regulating and supervising all the banks in the country.”
On the perception that Unibank was also not treated well, he said: “If you read the press statement that was issued, I think the issues were clear, that the bank was in a situation where the regulator thought that this action was needed”.
“We look at the situation and we had to enforce the prompt collective action under the law and that’s exactly what we did and it’s not because it was bank A or bank B,” Mr Osei Gyasi said.
Justification of UT and Capital bank collapse
There are concerns that looking the current challenges that the collapse of UT and Capital has brought in terms of dealing with the severance package of workers and even having to issue bonds to deal with the extra cost, Bank of Ghana should not have gone ahead with this action. But Central Bank disagrees.
According to the head of banking supervision, that action was taken to save the entire banking industry.
Reports of “serious” liquidity challenge in the banking sector
There are reports that some banks could go down soon as a result of some serious liquidity challenges, but Mr Gyasi tells JoyBusiness that as far as he is concerned no bank is going down soon.
He said some actions are being taken now to ensure that the entire banking system is safe, adding that “ as far as the regulator is concerned, I don’t know of any other bank that is deeply insolvent or a bank that is insolvent.”
The assurance could come as good news, especially when the reports have already resulted in some serious withdrawals from these banks.