General News of Thursday, 19 December 2002

Source:  

Govt Saves ?2billion A Month At Central Bank

The amount of currencies, destroyed by the Bank of Ghana has reduced by at least ?2 billion within a month. This was after the Daily Dispatch newspaper published a story that the Bank of Ghana was destroying good cedi notes.

The story was published after two months of investigations which revealed that quite a big chunk of currency notes which were destroyed were far better than those in circulation. The sickening aspect is that the bank had initially resisted attempts at investigations.

With the assistance of some patriotic Ghanaians who worked at the bank but loved Ghana more, the paper was able to get samples of some of the currency notes which were being destroyed.

Some officials at the bank were reportedly resisting attempts by security personnel to embark on random security checks. Further checks confirmed that the personnel had to take the case beyond the BoG for directives to be issued for security personnel to be allowed.

The result is that tremendous amount of savings have accrued to Ghana.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency recently, the Head of the Issue Department of the Bank of Ghana, Edward Ofei Bekoe said the bank spends about ?30 billion a month to replace bank notes.