President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has indicated that government injected GHC12.7 billion of taxpayers’ money into the seven local banks which eventually went under.

The Bank of Ghana earlier in August 2018 revoked the licences of five struggling banks and merged them into one and named it Consolidated bank Ghana limited.

The affected banks included uniBank, Sovereign Bank, Construction Bank, Royal Bank, and Beige Bank.


Speaking at the 80th anniversary celebratory durbar of one of the country’s finest secondary schools, Presbyterian Boys' Senior Secondary School, Legon, about the work of the central bank in purging the sector, Nana Akufo-Addo, who is on a four-day tour of the Central Region, said: “Under the rigorous leadership of the current Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison, a number of prudent measures have been taken to save and sanitise the banking sector”.

“To protect the deposits of the seven defunct banks, the government, through the Ministry of Finance”, the president noted, “has had to issue bonds to the tune of some GHS8 billion in favour of GCB Bank and the new Consolidate Bank Ghana Limited – the banks that have taken over the operations of the seven failed banks.

“This is in addition to liquidity support of some GHS4.7 billion that had been provided by the Bank of Ghana to these banks over a period before their closure.

“In fact, GHS12.7 billion of public funds has been injected into these seven banks following their malfunction. Depositors’ savings, however, have been safeguarded; job losses have been minimised and a strong set of indigenous banks, is being born”, the president asserted.

In the president’s view, “…It is better to have two performing indigenous banks than to have seven weak ones, as recent examples of Nigeria, Malaysia and others, have shown.

“I have no doubt that if these measures had not been taken, the banking system would have been seriously compromised with dire consequences for depositors and their savings”, he noted.