Consider Merging to Meet New Capital Requirement – MP to Banks

The Member of Parliament for the Effutu constituency, Alexander Afenyo-Markin has advised the various local banks struggling to raise enough capital to meet the new minimum capital requirement threshold to consider merging with other banks.

“They can talk to each other about the merger,” he said.

According to him, this will help safeguard the deposits of Ghanaians who bank with them.

The MP advised the Chief Executives of the various local banks after their meeting with the president on Monday.

The Chief Executives want the deadline for the GHc400 million new requirement extended from the end of 2018 to 2022.

But speaking on the issue, Afenyo-Markin said: “the chief executives’ going to the president was even wrong in the first place because he [the president] does not have the specific mandate on the matter at hand.”

“Of course if you are looking at it in the scope of the economy, yes, you can also argue that as chief executive of the land, everything going wrong must come to him but when you give that power to an institution…you don’t have to be interfering.”

He said if the banks have an issue with meeting the requirement, they could instead petition the governing board of the BoG and not the President.

“Assuming without admitting that the Governor of the Bank of Ghana is unreasonable, there is a board that the chief executives’ of the affected banks could appeal to or could engage. Going to the presidency or engaging the president directly on these concerns would be out of the acceptable mandate that we all know,” Afenyo-Markin argued on Asempa FM’s political programme, Ekosii Sen on Tuesday.

Banks MDs’ meeting with Akufo-Addo

Some Managing Directors and Chief Executive Officers of local banks in the country within the week paid a courtesy call on the President to discuss the request for an extension of the deadline date of the minimum capital requirement for domestic banks.

The local banks are appealing for an extension of the timeline in meeting the minimum capital requirement from one year to four years.

By this, the local banks want the deadline extended from December 2018 to 2022.

Though the banks admit to the idea of recapitalization, they argue that the period requested for them to comply was short and, therefore, asked for an extension to enable them to do so efficiently.

In a letter to the President and signed by all the managing directors of the local banks said they were in a better position to recapitalise up to GH¢170 million by the end of 2018, GH¢220 million by the end of 2019, GH¢280 million in 2020, GH¢340 million in 2021 and GH¢400 million in 2022.d

Source: Citinewsroom