Minority Calls For National Address By Akufo-Addo Over BoG

The Minority in Parliament is demanding a national address by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo over what it calls the insolvency of the Bank of Ghana.

The Minority leader, Cassiel Ato Forson anticipates that with its current state, the Bank will be forced to take some pressing measures which will impact the stakeholders.

Among them, he said include suspension of dividend payments; suspension of lending; restriction of appointment of new directors; temporal suspension of capital expenditure; and suspension of staff recruitment.

He has, therefore, called for a national address by the President.

In a social media post, the Member of Parliament for Ajumako-Enyan-Esiam constituency said measures to reverse the alleged state of the Bank must be communicated to the country through the address.

“Given the unprecedented collapse of our central bank, it is imperative for the President of Ghana to urgently address the nation. During this address, the President should outline the decisive actions that the government plans to implement in order to restore solvency to the Bank of Ghana”

The assertion of the Minority has been, however, downplayed by the government.

In a social media post last week, a deputy Finance Minister, Hon John Kuma said the Bank is solid and capable of performing its functions.

“It’s not true that a recapitalization levy is to be introduced for BoG, the Central Bank hasn’t collapsed. The main source of income to the Bank is from government transactions i.e. fees on all government transfers, the bank’s investments in marketable instruments and also earnings from non-marketable holdings of the Bank. Given that government transactions have gone down, naturally, the income of the bank will go down. Also, because of the debt restructuring, earnings on their holdings on marketable and non-marketable bonds will go down. Beyond this, the Bank is solid and is capable of performing its core function.”