The Bank of Ghana’s loss of Gh60.8 billion has been brought into question, and Rev. Dr. Samuel Worlanyo Mensah, an economist and lecturer at Wisconsin International University College, has urged Parliament to look into it.
Despite the loss being attributed by the Central Bank to the domestic debt restructuring program in its 2022 annual report, he claimed that a Parliamentary committee should be established to look into possible inconsistencies and illegalities.
“Is it not frightening that the Bank of Ghana would superintend over this huge loss? I believe there were irregularities and illegalities and a Parliamentary committee must investigate the Gh¢ 60.8 billion loss and any wrongdoing found must be punished,” Dr Mensah said.
He suggested that the investigation should encompass other statutory transactions that the Bank had engaged in over the past 8 to 10 years.
The Bank of Ghana clarified the reason for the loss as being due to the impairment of marketable government stocks and non-marketable government instruments held in their records.
The accumulation of government instrument stocks had occurred over the years, with these holdings and COCOBOD exposures being part of the debt exchange in which the Bank of Ghana acted as the loss absorber for the entire debt exchange program.
This led to the central bank assuming a 50 percent principal reduction on the total principal, which amounted to Gh¢ 64.5 billion at the time of the exchange.
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, he remarked that the government didn’t spend extensively on those transactions, hence the program shouldn’t be categorized as an expenditure attributable to the Bank of Ghana’s transactions.
He emphasized that the same rationale used for revoking licenses of certain financial institutions during the banking sector cleanup should be applied to investigating the central bank for any irregularities.
“As a crucial regulator and a huge industry player, you can’t do things haphazardly. The Bank of Ghana had not given the breakdown of how it incurred the loss, raising a concern for interrogation,” the Lecturer said.
He said if the details had been provided and cost-benefit analysis and investigation had proven that the Bank was complicit, then those who oversaw activities leading to the loss should be charged for mismanagement, misappropriation and misapplication of public funds.
Dr Mensah said Ghanaian had been going through a serious socioeconomic turmoill and the loss of such a colossal amount of money (Gh¢ 60.8 billion) which is equivalent to about $5.4 billion, more than the $3 billion IMF bailout be “swept under the carpet.”
“The Gh¢ 60.8 billion could be used to champion the industrialisation drive, that is the One District One Factory. The money could build all the factories for us in all the districts across the country,” he added.