Accra, Nov. 09, GNA 96 The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has directed all banks and non-financial institutions as matter of policy to disclose their true interest rates and other charges to ensure transparency from January next year.

They are required to fully publish their true annual rates of interest on current, deposits, and savings accounts, loans as well as charges on services such as the Automated Teller Machine (ATM). Institutions who failed to comply with the directive, which forms part of BoG reforms in the overall banking system in the country, would attract a penalty of over 100 million cedis per customer.

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, Deputy Governor of BoG, who made these known on Thursday in Accra when he made a presentation on financial access to Small and Medium Scale Enterprises said, "True disclosure "would encourage competition and make sure that all banks' charges are clear to the knowledge of customers".

He said the non-closure of such charges by institutions had always thrown dust into eyes of customers who engage in transactions before finding out later that the costs involve were higher than anticipated because of the limited information they had.

Dr Bawumia is currently working on the new national payment system, which would holistically, address the hurdles in the banking system and make the banks and non-banks do real banking business in the country. "We need to undertake a major payment system in Ghana to ensure access to credit in this country."

He said with about 23 banks in the country and a population of nearly 20 million, only 721,199 and 1,750,066 people operate current and savings accounts respectively.

"This means that less than 10 per cent of the population are banked, which creates very serious problem if we need to generate the kind of capital required to meet our developmental goals. "People must find it easier to save and we need to start right now from our schools," the Deputy Governor said.

Dr Bawumia said the new payment system, which would be fully operational mid next year would introduce electronic banking that required a common national switch of payment in the country. 09 Nov. 06