The Minority Caucus in parliament says it will engage the Speaker of the House to subpoena the Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr. Ernest Addison to explain why the central bank has failed to file its financial statement to the legislature.
Deputy Ranking Member on the Finance Committee of Parliament, Isaac Adongo disclosed to journalists that the Governor has failed to undertake the constitutional exercise for almost six months.
He explained that the law mandates the BoG to gazette its assets and liabilities every 15 days and file the financial statements by the end of the month.
Mr. Adongo said the BoG, has however, failed to comply with the directive since the beginning of 2023.
“As we speak today, the BoG under the leadership of Dr. Addison is always quick to revoke the licenses of financial institutions that are not complying with the Bank of Ghana Act, but the BoG itself is not complying with its own Act.”
“We are all aware that our economy is in a mess. Part of the reason we are in this mess is because of Dr. Addison of the Bank of Ghana”, he added.
Mr. Adongo pointed out that the statement is needed to assess the activities of the BoG in recent times.
“This is a BoG that pumped and printed a lot of money to fund government activities last year and the year before leading to very high levels of inflation, high levels of interest rate and an unprecedented depreciation of the cedi.”
He maintained that the financial statement should have been published by the end of April 2023.
“We are now half way through the year and all the banks have complied with the filing of their returns to the BoG. Those reports include what we call the long form report which are very detailed audited reports of the bank breaking down every single item on the balance sheet of the bank in order that we can see the bank for what it is”.
“But BoG is not able to comply with its own law to do the very things that other banks are doing. The bank has not filed and published its financial statement. Every 15 days the Bank of Ghana is supposed to gazette it assets and liabilities, and at the end of the month they are supposed to further file these assets and liability.
“It has been almost 6 months now and the Bank of Ghana is in clear violation of this policy,” he told the press during a briefing in Parliament.
Warning to Dr. Addison
The Bolgatanga Central MP revealed that the Minority Caucus is ready to drag the Governor before Parliament; failing which they will sue.
“I want to serve warning to the Governor of the central bank, that he should remember that he has dragged people to the court over the violations of the Bank of Ghana Act. As a matter of fact, one of them just died… that he should know that same level of accountability will be extended to him. But he has a decision to make, whether to cut his losses and abide by the law or to continue with these violations of the Bank of Ghana Act and that the long arm of the law is waiting for him.
“He should remember that criminality has no expiring date” he stated.
Mr. Adongo used the platform to urge the Board of Directors and auditors for BoG to investigate the matter if they do not want to be labeled accomplices.
“I want to ask the Board of Directors and the auditors of Bank of Ghana to pay particular scrutiny to the loan book of the BoG.
“If we find in future that the auditors of the BoG are complicit in concealing the true state of affairs at the BoG, we will take steps to remedy the situation and that remedy will include those auditors being brought to book and reporting them to their regulatory bodies,” he added.