Vice President, Dr. Bawumia has voiced his confusion over the former president’s pledge to reinstate the licenses of defunct banks to enable their reopening.
During a media briefing in Accra, Dr. Bawumia explained that restoring these licenses involves a complex legal procedure and cannot be resolved by simply overturning previous decisions.
His remarks underscored the necessity for a careful and legally robust approach, rather than just offering a political commitment.
“Now the banks were given capital to save the situation. They were given money by the Bank of Ghana, and they used that money to go and set up Capital Bank instead of rescuing the problem that they had,” he said.
“Some took the money and went and invested in private property. So it was against this background when the governor came to report, and this was one of my nightmares in the last 8 years. I couldn’t sleep that night with the whole bank system. Most people didn’t understand how close we were to the collapse of the entire banking system, but we were this close,” Bawumia added.
“Because all it would have taken was for a few depositors to go to UT Bank or UMT and they will tell you there is no money. What will happen? There would have been a complete run on the banking system in Ghana. We would have collapsed the banking system.”
“When the Governor came to report that we were on the verge of collapsing, decisions had to be taken to save the banking system and to save depositors, and this is how we had to merge many of these banks into other banks.”
“And we saved 4.6 million depositors. I will ask the former president if he hasn’t read to go and read the receiver’s report or to go and read the Bank of Ghana report and acquaint himself before making any comments on matters he clearly does not understand.”
“And you cannot hand over a bank’s licence to them. This is subject to legal procedures. You have to go to court. You don’t have the power in our constitution to do that.”