The minority in parliament has kicked against moves by the Bank of Ghana to hand over the National Investment Bank to the Agricultural Development Bank.
According to the NDC MPs the move smacks of conflict of interest since the Bank of Ghana owns over 60% stake in ADB.
Addressing the media in parliament Ranking member for finance committee Isaac Adongo accused the Nana Addo administration of seeking to sell NIB to cronies through the backdoor.
The Bolgatanga Central MP shared some ideas with government which he believes can make the troubled NIB stand on its feet without government selling it off.
“I wish to state here, that some of the proposals that were ignored are still very important today to remedy the situation. These include but are not limited to the following:
Sale of NIB’s 24% shares in Nestle Ghana acquired at Ghc50 million a long time ago, that were given a conservative value of Ghc500million in 2018.This singular proposal would have generated a risk-free cash of Ghc500million to NIB and provided a realised capital gain of Ghc450 million for recapitalization. Strangely, this was either ignored or lost on Hon. Ken Ofori Atta, who rather opted to take the shares in Nestle and swap it with a Ghc500 million government bond plus a further Ghc800million government debt as deposit for shares. As it turned out, those bonds have since been impaired through the poor conduct of the finance minister in the infamous and unending DDEP consistent with IFRS 9.
These actions have clearly weakened NIB further,” he stressed.
Hon. Adongo added: “Secondly, Mr. Kennedy Ofori Atta’s refusal to pay contracts that were executed by clients of NIB with loans has led to an initial amount of Ghc 860 million of NIB’S loans being written off from their books. It is clear that NIB has been intentionally run down by both fiscal and regulatory connivance to produce a prey. It is, therefore, not surprising that the current IMF ECF program identifies the resolution of the capitalization challenges of NIB as a key financial sector deliverable. Unfortunately, it appears to many that, Government is only being consistent in its policies with a certain intent to collapse banks and capture them. The strategy has been to find a solution that have the ultimate effect of collapsing NIB despite its large size, national status and systemic effect it could have, possibly leading to the wiping off of several viable jobs in a country that is struggling to create jobs for its teaming unemployed youths. A country that has created failed policies like NABCO.”
Source: Kasapafmonline.com