Don’t overburden GCB with non-performing loans – Minority

The Minority in Parliament has admonished government to desist from overburdening the GCB bank with non-performing loans from collapsed  UT bank and capital bank.

Addressing the press on the development on Tuesday, the ranking member on Parliament's Finance Committee Casiel Ato Forson urged the “Bank of Ghana to ensure that the acquiring bank in this case GCB which is the largest indigenous bank with both private and public shareholders is not overburdened unnecessarily with non-performing loans and impaired assets.”

He made the comment on the back of GCB's takeover of UT and Capital banks on Monday.

GCB bank was given the opportunity to assume ownership of the two banks because according to the Bank of Ghana (BoG) the said banks had “severe impairment of their capital.”

BoG also revoked the licenses of the two banks while the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) also suspended the listing status of UT Bank.

However, Mr. Ato Forson at the press conference urged the BoG to ensure that depositors with the two banks do not lose their monies adding that “should this happen, it will result in an unforeseen burden on taxpayers instead of the original owners of UT and capital bank.”

“It is important for us to stress that GCB is a listed company and we are hoping that at the minimum the shareholders resolution was passed before this major transaction was taken. If that is not the case, we urge that the minority and public demand to know whether the resolution of GCB was very much so conducted or approved before this transaction was approved,” the Ato Forson added.

We followed due process
But the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GCB, Raymond Sowah who addressed the press on Tuesday explained that they did not require an immediate consultation with its shareholders before the move but said they used due process .

“If you were at the Bank of Ghana press conference, they indicated the sensitivity of the matter and therefore everything had to be hush-hush because they were concerned about certain things going wrong. Now we have a lot of respected shareholders. We could not say that we are going to conduct an AGM or EGM to ask this question. This is something that we can deal with post assumption,” he added.

Non-performing loans, banks headache
Figures from the BoG show that non–performing loans (NPL) in the banking sector increased by as high as 69.4% from GH¢ 3.6 billion in July 2015 to GH¢ 6.1 billion in July 2016.

The central bank claimed that most of the NPL also known as bad loans were contributed by mainly Ghanaian companies.

It also attributed the issue to a number of factors, including the general slowdown in the economy, increasing cost of production due to high utility tariffs and loan portfolio reclassification by some banks.

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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin