The largest bank in the Middle East, Emirates NBD has indicated plans to set up a representative office in Ghana. According to the bank, this is to enable it take advantage of the huge economic opportunities in Ghana and sub-sahara Africa as a whole.

Speaking to JOY-BUSINESS in Dubai, Executive Vice President, Faisal Lalani says they are for now working to partner some of the local banks in Ghana in terms of trade financing.

“We are going to be looking at Africa very closely. Our initial strategy would be to work with some of the local banks – the very known names like ECOBANK and the top Nigerian banks. We would effectively support them in all forms of commodity financing. Our intention is to reinforce the ability of the local banks to go across borders by supporting them from both a liquidity and networking perspective. And so hopefully within the 6 months time you would see our bank going deeper and working closely with some of the good African banks” he said.

If Emirates NBD’s plan materializes, it would be one of the few banks in the Middle East to expand its operations to Ghana. Emirates NBD, currently is worth 81.2 billion dollars.