The Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Reverend Daniel Ogbarmey Tetteh, has admonished Ghanaian investors to stay away from investing in ‘promising schemes’ to avoid being swindled.
The Director General was making a presentation on, ‘Financial sector reforms’ at a regional town hall meeting held in Bolgatanga, the Upper East regional capital on Monday under the theme, ‘Accounting for financial sector resolution, jobs and agriculture.’
He told the public that such swindlers would often begin with very promising schemes and implement such schemes for a while and after which they would go away with customers.
Rev Tetteh explained that it was not for nothing that the Bank of Ghana (BoG) initiated measures to clean up the mess in the financial sector to help ensure and restore confidence in the financial sector.
He mentioned the use of depositors’ funds by some of the financial institutions for personal use, poor corperate governance, persistent regulation breaches, and excessive risk, among others, as some of the major factors that led to the cleaning of the financial sector.
The Security and Exchange Commission boss stated that the engagement with the financial institutions did not yield any good results, compelling the BoG to take measures to close the banks that were in a mess.
He indicated that though a lot of people were of the view that BoG could have used the bailout system to redeem the affected financial institutions, their mismanagement was too much to go by that.
The Director General stated that the government made efforts to help engage the workers that were affected in some of the financial institutions that were affected by fixing them in other banks including the Ghana Consolidated Bank.
Reverend Tetteh stated that through the cleanup exercise in the financial sector, the investor confidence was not now being restored, and mentioned some of the measures as the institutionalisation of good corporate governance, sustained investor education, and creation of investor protection.
Whilst the forum gave the opportunities to all the 15 municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) to make presentations and exhibitions, it also afforded the citizens to ask questions from the MMDCEs.
Some of the participants at the forum said they were afraid of depositing money in the banks as a result of the panic in the banking industry but were assured that security measures had been put in place to address the challenges.
The forum attracted stakeholders from all the 15 municipal and district assemblies including traditional rulers, representatives of political parties, civil society organisations, faith based organisations and the media, among others.
FROM SAMUEL AKAPULE, BOLGATANGA
