The Bank of Ghana's supervision unit is boosting its headcount and has acquired a new IT system for monitoring compliance as part of efforts to strengthen the central bank's capacity to regulate lenders and avoid another overhaul of the sector, Bloomberg News reported, citing Osei Gyasi, the division's head.
The division's staff are being trained to strictly apply regulations, Gyasi said.
In August, the Bank of Ghana completed the cleanup of the financial sector that led to the revocation of the licenses of 23 insolvent savings and loans companies and finance house firms, as well as two inactive nonbank financial institutions. The central bank previously withdrew the licenses of 386 insolvent microfinance and microcredit companies in May.
The Ghanaian government has earmarked 11.2 billion cedis to bail out the depositors of banks and a further 925 million cedis for microfinance and microcredit companies. It also set aside up to 1.2 billion cedis to bail out savings and loans firms, the news agency noted.
As of Sept. 11, US$1 was equivalent to 5.47 Ghanaian cedis.
