Former President John Mahama has accused the Akufo-Addo government of collapsing some nine local banks for political reasons.

He explained that the government could have spent GH¢9 billion to save the banks rather than allowing them to collapse only for it to use GH¢22 billion of taxpayers’ money to refund monies to the affected depositors.

The Bank of Ghana, in 2017, commenced a series of clean-up exercises in the financial sector that saw the revocation of licences of the nine banks along with 347 microfinance companies, 23 savings & loans companies as well as finance houses, and 39 microcredit companies.

Mr Mahama, who has been touring the Savanna Region in recent times, said: “Financial institutions have been collapsed, Ghanaians’ money has been locked up. You needed GH¢9 billion to save those banks and financial institutions that collapsed but because of politics, somebody decided to closed them down”.

“Now, Ghana is spending GH¢22 billion to pay the deposits of people whose monies were locked up.

“What kind of sense is this? You won’t spend GH¢9 billion to save the banks but you pay GH¢22 billion to pay back peoples’ deposits and you can’t even pay”, Mr Mahama criticised.

“I heard the president say he has paid 98 per cent of the depositors. We should ask the depositors how have they received their money?” the former President said.