SSB to attract more foreign exchange

The Social Security Bank (SSB) Limited is to increase the number of sources of its foreign inflows to enable it finance import trade. The Deputy Managing Director, Mr. Ben Gogo, said the bank intends to market itself especially, in North America and some European countries where a number of Ghanaians can be located to transact business in the country.

Mr. Gogo said this when SSB took its turn at the "Facts Behind the Figures" program organized by the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) in Accra. The SSB is the fourth company to take part in the program aimed at giving managers of listed equities the opportunity to interact with the media, brokers and investors. He added that foreign exchange inflow in Ghana was very tight in the past year, ?this has worsened in the past three months and to get our fair share, there is the need to adopt aggressive measures to get to the source of foreign exchange.

We intend to increase the number of sources of foreign exchange by making the bank more visible in the Western countries to advertise ourselves as one of the channels to bring funds to Ghana." He said SSB's link with MoneyGram, an international money transfer company, has earned it some foreign exchange but there is more room for improvement.

Mr. Gogo said, the bank would also take steps to enhance the quality of its services in order to attract higher charges that would yield higher incomes. It would also widen the base of its services to attract higher fee income. This, he said, is because whereas the bank has a strong growth in interest income on its activities, fee income base is very weak making it necessary to widen the number of services available to customers. He added that the Bank would also optimize the use of technology in banking operations this year.

"Even though all our branches are computerized, there is the need to have them networked to make transaction of business more convenient." The SSB Sika Card would be hooked to the network for customers to be able to access their accounts through it. The Deputy Managing Director said the introduction of the card has brought in billions of cedis and efforts would be made to make it possible for customers to use them to make their foreign exchange transaction.

He said the bank would continue to support traditional exports, especially, timber since the non-traditional exports are sometimes not viable. The General Manager of the GSE, Mr. Francis Tweneboa, said the objective of the program is to draw out on a face-to-face basis, additional and more detailed information, both qualitative and quantitative not portrayed by the financial reports of listed companies.

SSB, listed in 1995, has authorized shares of 100 million of no par value, has 69 million issued shares and two million shares in treasury. Its present total volume of shares traded so far is 75.3 million with a total value of 119.4 billion cedis. Its market capitalization as at April 12 this year was 142.36 billion cedis.