Allow banks to recapitalise base on business interest- Asafo-Adjei

Mr Osei Asafo-Adjei, the Managing Director(MD) of the Royal Bank, has suggested to the Bank of Ghana (BoG) to allow banks to recapitalise based on the nature of their business interest.

He said, this would imply that banks that would like to do big ticket transactions should recapitalise to accommodate such businesses.

Mr Asafo-Adjei made the suggestions, when the management team of the Bank met journalists on the half year performance of the business entity and to discuss the way forward.

“At the end of the day, the business focus of that particular bank determines how much capital it should require,” he added.

The MD, therefore, assured its customers that the Bank would be in a position to recapitalise, when the BoG sets new limits for recapitalisation.

In May, the BoG, gave a directive to banks with minimum capital below industry levels to as a matter of urgency submit to the Central Bank a comprehensive recapitalisation plan.

It was also to strengthen the financial sector, enhance the bank’s supervisory role and put the real economy on a sound footing.

He said the Bank was not in any financial distress currently.

“The bank is not bankrupt,” he said.

He said recapitalisation was a good idea and he believed that a well-capitalised banking sector provided a strong backbone to the economy.

Commenting on the treasury single account implemented by government, Mr Asafo-Adjei said it was a good initiative but cautioned government to consider a phased transaction in order not to cause any systematic failure of banks that had huge government deposit.

He said some State Owned Enterprises operate a commercial entities, so government should allow them to have deposits with commercial banks.

He said management has adopted a three-pronged approaches to turnaround the fortunes of the bank; focusing on recoveries, improving on asset quality and increasing operational efficiency and human capital.

“We have set up a recovery department with the mandate to recover our non-performing loan portfolio, while we review and improve our credit policies to ensure that loan assets that we create are the best quality,” he added.

He said the Bank’s strategy to improve efficiency was built on improving revenue through income diversification and reducing the cost of funds.

He said the Bank released its half year 2017 financial statements showing a profit of GHc 2.6 million after tax, indicating that it was very encouraging compared to a loss of GHc 38 million at the end of the year.

He said the Bank demonstrated resilience in the face of a challenging macro-economic environment, which had a particular impact on the SME sector, the bank’s core client base.

He said the Bank had budgeted to make a loss of GHc 8 million by half year but rather made a profit of GHc 2.6 million, attributing the positive turn of events to the increase in demand deposits and recoveries of some of the bad loans that the bank had provisioned at the end of 2016.

He said the Bank would be in a much better position if some contractors, who had performed under government related contracts were paid.