We continue with our commendation of the steps taken by the Bank of Ghana in paying monies belonging to depositors of collapsed banks, which we published yesterday.

Banking institutions are important financial and economic tools that help a country to mobilise its finances and distribute them in the form of loans and overdrafts to their customers.

This is an exercise that is very important for any country to experience economic growth. Such growth is necessary to instil confidence in the country to attract investors and businesses.

Without confidence in the banking sector, businesses will collapse and reconstruction of the national economy will be difficult to be carried out.

For this reason, it is important for the power that be in the banking sector to work as hard as possible to maintain sanity among banking institutions in the country.

To be able to do this, the Bank of Ghana (BoG), which is our central bank, ought to be up and doing, and ensure that all banks in the country are rigidly controlled in line with banking regulations.

The BoG is not expected to be unnecessarily hard on banking institutions in the country, but to ensure that as much as possible licensed banks are regulated in the manner expected of them.

When this is done, the interest of the banking customer will be protected and, thereby, help in the promotion of business in the country.

Not long ago, when some of the banks started disappointing their customers by failing to return the deposits of their customers to them, it became obvious that the country was heading towards a banking crisis.

Fortunately, this was prevented when the government intervened to prevent this near-disaster situation.

As stated yesterday, the Times is happy to learn that the government has completed the process of paying all depositors of the nine banks whose licences were revoked in 2019.

Another good news is that the government has also paid 95 per cent of the collapsed savings and loans as well as micro-finance companies.

The Times commends the government on this, and calls on the BoG to be ever active in regulating banking institutions in the country.

This is important, if the country is to move forward in its direction towards economic growth.