GH¢60bn loss: We’ve not been reckless – BoG fights back

The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has rejected claims that the GH¢60 billion losses it recorded in 2022 were a result of recklessness.

“What we are seeing on the balance sheets of BoG is not as a result of reckless policy, or bad decisions but the direct impact from DDEP. We can say [BoG] policy has been suboptimal. Suboptimal in the sense that we chose an action to save the economy from total collapse but as a result of the DDE, it has landed us here,” the Director of Research at BoG, Dr Philip Abradu-Otoo insisted.

He was speaking in an interview with Umaru Sanda Amadu on the Point Blank segment on Eyewitness News when he made the remarks.

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.

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.