Flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has urged former President John Dramani Mahama to review the available data before commenting on the government’s banking sector clean-up.
Speaking at his media engagement in Accra on Sunday, Dr Bawumia defended the administration’s actions, emphasising the necessity and positive outcomes of the reforms.
He highlighted that the clean-up was essential to restore stability and confidence in the financial sector, which had been plagued by insolvency and mismanagement issues.
The Vice President noted that the government saved 4.6 million depositors, urging the former president to acquaint himself with data on the issue before making further comments.
“We saved the deposits of 4.6 million bank depositors who really were going to lose their deposits, if those banks were not saved. I don’t understand whether the former president has taken his time to actually understand what actually happened in the banking sector. Some atrocious things happened and this is why these banks had to be saved. They were mot collapsed, they were merged into other banks and no banking depositor lost GH₵1. But we had very bad things happening, some of the banks broke all the rules and extended loans way above the single obligor limits.”
“They were given, in some cases GH₵1 billion by the Bank of Ghana to help them out of the mess and they only got deeper into the mess. Another bank was given capital to save the situation… they used that money to go and set up Capital Bank, instead of rescuing the problem that they had. They took the money from the Central Bank and set up another business which was also collapsed. Some took money and went and invested in private properties.”
“So, it was against this background when the governor came to report, and this was one of my nightmares in the last eight years… Most people didn’t understand how close we were to a collapse of the entire banking system…This is howcome we had to merge many of these banks into other banks and we saved 4. 6 million depositors.”
“I’ll ask the former president if has hasn’t read, to go and read the receivers report or to go and read the BoG’s report and acquaint himself before making any further comments on matters he clearly doesn’t understand.
“He needs to get understanding before making further comments and he cannot hand over a bank’s licence to them, this is subject to legal procedure,” he stated.
