General News of Saturday, 14 September 2019

Source: mynewsgh.com

Blame NDC for job losses in banking sector – Jeff Konadu

Jeff Konadu is Eastern Regional Secretary for the ruling New Patriotic Party Jeff Konadu is Eastern Regional Secretary for the ruling New Patriotic Party

The Eastern Regional Secretary for the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Jeff Konadu has indicated that erstwhile National Democratic Congress (NDC) Government should be blamed for the crisis in the banking sector that led to several job losses.

According to him, rather than criticizing the New Patriotic Party’s administration for the job losses, Ghanaians should rather praise the ‘elephant’ party for saving funds of millions of depositors in the banking clean-up exercise between 2017 and 2019.

Mr Jeff who made these remarks in an interview on Radio 1 morning show Monitored by MyNewsGh.com said “I think we should tell the story better. GH¢11.2 billion, which was not budgeted for, has been spent to secure the funds of depositors in the collapsed banks. Ironically, the government is receiving no applause for this.”

Explaining further, he said “note this amount is more than the $2bn Sinohydro facility that we have praised so much. This is GH¢11.2 billion that could have fixed our roads, schools, drains, health centers, etc.”

“Specifically, during the NDC regime, according to the evidence, some Banks engaged in the following activities which compromised their capital and liquidity, leading to their collapse: poor regulation and irresponsible corporate governance practices, circumvention of banking laws which resulted in some Banks obtaining licenses under false pretenses, false financial reporting as well as insider dealings,” he mentioned.

He urged that “we should not underrate the monumental rescuing job the NPP has done for the banking sector in Ghana. We will see the benefits for a long time to come.”

“By the time this entire cleaning up exercise is complete by next year (banks, savings & loans, microfinance and asset managements), over GH¢14 billion of your money as Ghanaian taxpayers would have been spent on it.”