Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr Johnson Asiama, has urged banks to scale up their risk management frameworks.
Dr Asiama said this after making the point that the central banks are working hard to control non-performing loan (NPL) ratios of banks.
Speaking in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank spring meetings in Washington, Dr Asiama said, “The non-performing loan ratio for banks we came to meet at a very high level, and so we are controlling that as well. We are urging banks to enhance the risk management frameworks so that even as we scale up private sector credit delivery, we do not worsen that anchor. ”
Dr Johnson Asiama further recounted that the Mahama administration inherited an economy that was facing severe challenges.
He said inflation was high, the exchange rate was wide, and the economy had been downgraded by the rating agencies.
But within 8 months into office, he said, they have turned the corner.
“It has been 8 months since we came into office, and we came to meet a challenged economy. Remember, we had the domestic debt issue in 2022. Fiscal policy was highly expansionary, which led to our exiting the financial market.
“There was resort to domestic financing; you remember all the sovereign downgrades that we had to suffer. And so we came into office with lots of liquidity, high inflation, exchange rate that was depreciating widely.
“I remember when we came in, there was talk about whether we should cancel the programmes altogether, there were doubts as to whether we would be able to carry on with the programme and end it. But I am happy to say that 8 months down the road, we have turned the corner, Ghana is back, inflation, we met it nearly 24 per cent, but currently it is down to 9.4%, we are seeing a strong rebound in growth.”
Dr Asiama further dismissed claims that the central bank is depleting the country’s foreign reserves through market interventions, saying that they are rather rebuilding its reserves, not burning them.
“Yes, there were allegations about whether we’re intervening in the market. But that was not exactly the case,” he said.
He explained that what appeared to be heavy central bank activity between the second and third quarters of 2025 was mainly due to “lumpy payments” that had to be cleared during that period.
“Between the second and the third quarter, we had to do a number of lumpy payments. There were all these large arrears in payments to some of the IPPs. These were billions of US dollars,” Dr Asiama explained.
Source:Lovinghananews.com
