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BoG to set new capital requirements for banks
Accra, Jan. 30, Ghanadot/GNA - Bank of
Ghana on Tuesday said it had proposed an upward adjustment
for the minimum capital requirement for commercial banks and
non-banks financial institutions.
It said for banks, their minimum paid up capital would
increase from 7.0 million GH cedis to between 50 to 60
million GH cedis.
Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NBFIs) and finance houses
would increase from 1.0 Million GH cedis and 1.5 million GH
cedis respectively to between 5-8 million GH cedis.
Announcing this at the first Monetary Policy Committee press
conference in Accra, Dr Paul Acquah, Governor of the Bank of
Ghana, said the decision to increase the requirements was to
further strengthen the financial sector and position it for
Ghana’s accelerated growth agenda.
“The banking system needs to be re-capitalized to support
the banks’ strategies of deepening the financial sector for
accelerated growth in the country,” he further explained.
He said the actual time for compliance of the new
requirements would soon be announced with circulars to all
banks and NBFIs adding “the bank is currently working out
the modality for the time frame for compliance.”
A survey of credit conditions conducted by the Bank
indicated evidence of improved credit conditions in terms of
access and terms of credit supplies.
According to the Governor, “Banks are increasingly favouring
credit to households in the form of consumer loans, small
scale enterprises, while credit conditions for mortgages are
tightening because of resource constraints in an
increasingly competitive environment.”
Dr. Acquah said provisional data available indicated that
there was an increase in broad money (M2+) in the fourth
quarter of 2007 compared with 17.2 percent of the fourth
quarter of 2006.
GNA
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