“The losses the Central Bank has incurred are unprecedented and it will take us years to recover. The Bank of Ghana over-exposed itself to the government,” says a senior lecturer at the University of Ghana Business School, Prof. Godwin Alufar Bokpin.

In an interview on Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo', he stated that the losses suffered by the BoG have limited their ability to perform their duties with moral authority in the financial market.

The big elephant in the room

The Professor of Finance blamed the government for the current state of the BoG, stating that Ghana's problem is mainly governance and not economics or finance.

“The government is the big elephant in the room. This is what they have done to the Central Bank . . . and we said it long ago that a time will come when we will say how the Central Bank together with the government messed up our financial system. This is the result. What we are seeing on the books of the Central Bank is a true reflection of what this economy has gone through . . . I’m not sure the Governor of the Bank Of Ghana is happy having this on his CV,” Prof Bokpin told Kwami Sefa Kayi.

None Holy

According to Prof Bokpin, the Central Bank's problems predate the current administration and both major political parties share responsibility.

“Between the two main political parties (NDC, NPP) there’s none holy, no not one”.

He said BoG situation “should lead us to a national conversation that helps insulate certain national institutions from political capture".

According to the Economist and Professor of Finance, “we could have minimized this whole thing; it was very clear that government needed to cut wasteful expenditure and you would have protected the balance sheet of the Central Bank, because it got to a time the Central Bank had to make a difficult decision: they either allow the regime to collapse and the economy developing into a full-blown crisis or they will compromise their integrity, operational independence to sustain the government on its balance sheet. The result of that is the losses we are counting right now”.