The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has refuted suggestions that its GH60 billion losses in 2022 were the product of carelessness.
“What we are witnessing on the balance sheets of BoG is the direct consequence of DDEP, not irresponsible policies or bad actions.” We may claim that [BoG] policy has been subpar. Suboptimal in the sense that we took an action to rescue the economy from utter collapse, but as a result of the DDE, it has led us here,” Dr Philip Abradu-Otoo, Director of Research at BoG, said.
He made the statements during an interview with Umaru Sanda Amadu on Eyewitness News’ Point Blank show.
The BoG’s audited financial statement for 2022 which was released on July 28, 2023, indicated that as of 31 December 2022, the total liabilities of the central bank and its subsidiaries exceeded its total assets by GH¢54.52 billion.
Dr. Philip Abradu-Otoo said the losses were a result of the government’s domestic debt restructuring activities, and the depreciation of the local currency, among others.
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Highlighting measures to recover the losses, the BoG research director stated that they will strictly ensure that the central bank’s profits are retained.
He further disclosed that officials of BoG have started engaging the government to inject some capital into the central bank.
“We need to recover this GH¢60 billion. The central bank will have to retain its profits. We are now going to ensure that we strictly retain all our profits. One other problem that created this situation was the fact that we need now to move towards optimising the returns from our portfolio. We manage our funds ourselves at the Bank of Ghana.
“And we need to ensure that we get a lot of returns. Above all, we need to ensure that we get capitalised as we move along the process. Those talks have started with the government and along the line, we expect some capitalisation from the government,” the Director of Research at BoG told Umaru Sanda Amadu.
He emphasized that the Bank of Ghana has not received a capital injection from the government since the 60s.
“We have never had a capital injection from our main shareholder [government] since the 60s to keep the bank running. That is top on the agenda, that will have to be done to bring the bank up,” he indicated.
He assured that they will be working assiduously to recover the loss.
“We will be working to recover, we are hoping that in five-six years, this situation would have reversed,” Dr Philip Abradu-Otoo noted.
