Ho, June 16, GNA - The Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) is poised to expand its operations into areas where potentials for agricultural production are high.

This is to ensure that the average farmer would not travel far to access credit.

Mr Ibrahim Adam, Board Chairman of the Bank, announced this at the launch of the Ho Branch of the Bank with 855 customers. It is one of the four new branches opened in the Volta Region. The others are in Kpeve, Kpando and Nkwanta, while branches in Juapong, Denu and Hohoe have existed for a while. Mr Adam said the Bank had a central role to play in the government's agricultural modernization and programmes. It is also critical to the food security agenda of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Mr Adam said the Bank is reinventing itself to ensure its spread and performance.

He said under the new dispensation officials of the Bank would become extension officers and be closer to its clients and educate and monitor them. This would reduce the loans default rate and make loans less expensive. Mr Adams called for high patronage of the Bank in the region promising, "we will make good our lateness." Mr Stephen Kpordzih, Managing Director of ADB, said the opening of the four new branches in the region was part of the Bank's three year strategic plan under which 16 outlets would be opened in that region and the Northern regions.

He said under the Plan: "the ADB would be transformed into a modern universal bank with development focus on agriculture and more and become the one of the "Top three performing banks in Ghana by the year 2012. "To strengthen the core business of agriculture a dedicated outfit now handles agricultural finance, with the support of a Strategic Policy Co-ordinating Unit to ensure that ADB becomes highly efficient in agricultural policy lending for the development of agro-based businesses." He said the Bank had also gone into asset finance business to focus on asset leasing and finance to the agricultural, oil and gas and transportation, mining and construction, telecommunications and manufacturing.

Dr Kofi Wampah, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, urged the ADB to focus on agriculture and do more for the sector by looking at the entire value chain in its financing of the sector. He said though the sector is risky it holds high potentials for economic growth and development.

Dr Wampah said the concentration of banks in Accra did not promote good financial inclusion and the literacy necessary for economic development. He, therefore, urged banks to transfer more of their services and personnel to rural areas wh ere potential businesses were waiting to be discovered and developed. The Deputy Volta Regional Minister, Colonel Cyril Necku, (rtd) congratulated the board and management of the ADB for taking "the grand step", to open new branches in the region. "We have waited for too long," he commented He urged the Bank's customers to reciprocate the confidence of the Bank by increasing its presence in the region and honouring their obligations to it.

He urged the Bank to find innovative ways to support and make agriculture very vibrant in order to attract the youth and those who are unemployed to the sector. Togbe Kwaku Ayim IV, Fiaga of Ziavi Traditional Area, who presided, said the presence of the ADB in the region would suit the people well because of its agricultural orientation.

He called on the Bank to monitor its customers in the rural areas and help them to make productive use of loans offered to them so that they could repay them promptly. 16 June 10