The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has revealed that, he was shocked when he reconciled the huge sums in potential bailout money for the 5 collapsed banks and the enormous debt overhang.

According to the Finance Minister, gross indiscipline by the powerful has risked and hurt those with very little to survive on.

Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta was speaking at the Danquah Institute Forum in collaboration with Citi FM on the theme, ‘The Banking Clean Up, Are Depositors Safe?’

The merging of the 5 banks, he noted, was not born-out of politics, but about human decency and to prevent millions of Ghanaians from losing their savings.

Ken Ofori-Atta explained that, when he started thinking about the little numbers that made up those colossal amounts of money involved and the millions of individuals who have had to, and continue to, struggle to make ends meet, the only option was to merge the Banks.

‘But just like that, in one fell swoop, many of them risked losing everything they had saved,’ he said.

‘Those numbers in front of me unpacked manifold narratives. It spoke of our current moral standards as a country. It spoke of our understanding or misunderstanding of goodwill. It spoke of our ability or inability to question what is just or unjust. It spoke of our appreciation of or lack of ethics.’

The Finance Minister assured the nation that, though the country’s banking sector is in difficult times, there is no cause to panic.

He called for support and prayers, adding that, this is not about witch-hunting.

‘The law will take its due course, but our interest is to protect depositors, and the most important pillar of our economy: the financial industry’, Ken Ofori-Atta posit.