BoG Suspends Fidelity Bank, First National Bank Forex Licences
The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has temporarily suspended the forex licences of Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited and First National Bank Ghana Limited following a breach of regulations governing Ghana’s Interbank Forex Market.
Specifically, they are said to have breached sections 3.4, 3.5, and 3.9 of the Ghana Interbank Forex Market Conduct rules which respectively state that “LFXDs are required to update indicative quotes for buying and selling US dollars at regular intervals, on the Reuters and Bloomberg information systems. Indicative quotes shall be updated at intervals of no more than 30 minutes. (This will show the price at which a market-maker is prepared to buy and sell at the minimum traded lots).
“All interbank FX trades must be booked on the Reuters platform and appropriately confirmed within five (5) minutes after the trade is concluded. These trades must also be reported in the daily FX report submitted to the Bank of Ghana.
“The Bank of Ghana shall publish the Ghana Cedi reference rate with respect to the US dollar on the Bank of Ghana website by 16:30 hours GMT daily except on holidays. The reference rate shall be computed using the weighted average exchange rate of all eligible US dollar transactions that are reported to the Bank of Ghana by the cut-off time of 15:30 hours GMT. The Bid and Offer reference rates are calculated by taking a +/- 0.05% bid/ask spread around the weighted average exchange rate. The reference rate will also be published on Reuters and Bloomberg by 16.30 hours GMT.”
In a statement on June 29, the Bank said the suspension of their licences will last until July 28.
“The Bank has suspended the respective forex licences of the above-mentioned banks from 29th June 2023 to 28th July 2023.”
The Central Bank said they have also been fined 1000 penalty points each.
It, therefore, used the opportunity to caution other operators against going against the guidelines.
“By this notice, we caution forex market players including banks, forex bureaus, forex brokers, and money transfer operators (MTOs) to adhere strictly to the applicable forex market regulations and guidelines.”
