The Bank of Ghana is not processing any fresh licenses for any new entrants into the banking sector, Governor, Dr. Ernest Yedu Addison has said.
In an address delivered in Accra, Dr. Addison said that the recent reforms that the Central bank carried out has cleaned up the sector and placed it on a more robust footing.
According to him, the reforms have made the fewer banks in the system very resilient to possible shocks of any kind, be it internal or external.
The reforms pruned down the number of banks in the system from 33 to 23. Concomitantly, it is estimated that up to one million direct and indirect employees lost their jobs.
Some of the banks are in court with the BoG over claims that the Central bank had acted illegally in revoking their licenses.
The Central Bank has however justified the financial sector reform, which is estimated to cost government some ghc21billion by the end of the year, by saying that it has made Ghana’s banking sector less riskier
The few resilient banks that have withstood the clean up, it says, have been left in positions that makes them more reliable for the banking public to trust them with money. While hinting that the BoG would not rush to issue new licenses, Dr. Ernest Addison also said no new applications for licenses have been made anyway.