Koforidua, April 17, GNA - The New Juaben Municipal Chief Executive, Nana Akwasi Adjei Boateng has urged residents of the municipality to cultivate the habit of saving with the banks to ensure the safety of their money, as well as access to loans.

He noted with concern that most petty traders in the area did not show interest in bank savings and therefore found it difficult to expand their businesses due to inadequacy of their capital base.

Nana Adjei Boateng was speaking at the launch of a raffle and mobile 'susu' banking by the Mponua Rural Bank on Friday at Koforidua. He expressed concern about the increasing tendency in the country where large sums of cash being kept in the homes is lost in fire accidents, reiterating that the moneys are safer at the banks. The Chief Executive said as a means of encouraging the culture of savings at the bank, the municipal assembly was arranging with all banks within the municipality to serve as channels through which the Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF) loans could be accessed.

This, he hoped, would facilitate the smooth operation of the scheme.

Nana Boateng noted that out of one billion cedis PAF loans given out, only about 45 per cent had been recovered from the beneficiaries and appealed to the people to pay back the loans so that others could also benefit from it.

The board chairman of the bank, Mr Daniel Ansong, said since its establishment twenty-one years ago, the bank had undertaken projects to enhance the socio-economic life of the people in all its eight branches located in the Eastern and Ashanti Regions.

Some of the projects undertaken were extension of power to communities, construction of school blocks and sponsoring needy students through the second-cycle education.