Government Pledges to Improve Financial Sector

Government is providing the framework to improve the efficiency of Ghana’s financial sector to enable it play an effective role in promoting economic growth, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said.

He said an effective and efficient financial system was a prerequisite for the transformation of Ghana’s economy to a modernised and industrialised one focused on value addition.

President Akufo-Addo said this when the representatives of the Ghana Association of Savings and Loans Companies (GHASALC) called on him at the Flagstaff House in Accra.

The call was to introduce the Association to the President and apprise him of its challenges and also find ways the GHASALC could fit into government’s plans and policies for the country’s socio-economic advancement.

GHASALC is an association of savings and loans companies registered under the laws of Ghana and also licensed by the Bank of Ghana.

The President lauded the group for its crucial role in deepening the financial sector’s participation in the country’s economic growth.

He took notice of their concerns, the most important being the Bank of Ghana’s intended increase of the minimum capital requirement for savings and loans companies from GH¢7 million to GH¢15 million.

The Association said if that happened, their businesses would not be sustainable.

President Akufo-Addo, however, assured the GHASALC that government would look into that concern, because “whatever is to be done to strengthen their capacity is very important for the success of the economy.”

He harped on the potential of the sector to greatly influence growth in the Small and Medium-scale Enterprises and urged the Association to leverage the One District-One Factory Policy to fund productive investments that would spur growth for both the sector and the country.

Mr Kofi Ampofo Agyepong, the Chairman of GHASALC, on behalf of the Association, commended the President for the strides his administration had made in its first year of governance.

He said the Association, like any other financial entity, was poised to render its quota to the development of the country.

However, government should give the sector the needed support to enable it to play its part effectively in the economic development of the nation.