The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has assured that, government will refund depositors’ monies that are locked up in banks and other financial institutions due to government’s clean-up exercise in the financial sector.
According to the Minister, government had spent GH¢14 billion throughout the process to make sure the banking crisis was contained and urged the affected depositors to be a little more patient and not lose hope in the process.
Addressing the 56th Annual Session of the Ghana Baptist Convention (GBC) at Ejura in the Ashanti Region, Mr Ofori-Atta said, government was expecting that, the receivers (financial institutions) of the monies government had pumped into the sector would move quickly to recover so that, they could begin to take care of the bigger depositors.
He stated that, the decision to clean-up the financial sector though a difficult situation for government, investors, and regulators among other stakeholders, was necessary as it has started yielding the desired results.
Mr Ofori-Atta indicated that, in as much as government was concerned with how the financial sector clean-up had affected individuals, it (government) was also concerned with how it had also affected investors and institutions especially churches.
He stressed that, investors had the responsibility to consider the moral implications of their investment decisions urging them to thoroughly scrutinise the activities of the financial institutions they were considering investing in or banking with.
The President of the convention, Reverend Dr Ernest Adu-Gyamfi, disclosed to the Ghanaian Times, in an interview that the convention had been affected by the banking crisis adding that, one of the affected financial institutions (name withheld) which had been in existence for more than 20 years, was owned by a church member and most of the church members were saving and acquired loans from there.
Dr. Adu-Gyamfi indicated that, the convention had one of its accounts in that financial institution and all the church’s monies in that account and reserves have been locked up and this had become a huge blow to the church.
He entreated the government to help the church and all affected individuals and institutions to recover their monies.
This year’s session was under the theme, “Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity; the future of Baptist identity.”
