The Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) has finally confirmed it is going to list on the Ghana Stock Exchange to offer opportunity to many Ghanaians to own shares in the company.

The Chairman of ADB’s Board of Directors, Ibrahim Adam, who disclosed this at the weekend during the bank’s end-of-year carols night and dinner party for its employees and customers on Friday in Accra, said the company wants to widen its scope of operations and assist many customers in the country hence its determination to go public.

He therefore called on Ghanaian investors to buy into the company and make it win more laurels.

Steve Kpordzih, Managing Director of ADB, in a speech, said the bank was also seriously working on its Visa Electron Cards as well as other internet services in order to expand its customer base, adding that these will start operating by February, next year.

The main focus of Agricultural Development bank (ADB) since its inception in 1965 has been the provision of credit facilities for the development and modernization of agriculture and allied industries. It is estimated that ADB is currently responsible for about 85% of institutional credit to agricultural sector.

In the areas of primary production, ADB promotes food and industrial crops, fishing, aquaculture, poultry and livestock, vegetables for local consumption and export.

Its operations further encompass the promotion of agri-business which involves the storage, warehousing, transportation, concentration, distribution and marketing of agricultural produce and input of all kinds; processing of primary agricultural produce to add value; as well as agro-export which involves purchasing, concentration and transportation of primary and secondary agricultural produce exclusively for export.

This year, it has increased its branch network with the opening of four new branches at Bole and Tamale in the Northern region, Tumu in the Sissala District of the Upper West region and Asiakwa in the Eastern region.

Mr. Kpordzih said: “Our branch network expansion programme is also to help attract more of the unbanked population and give our customers more choice of locations to do banking with ADB. In addition, “it gives us the edge to increase deposit mobilization and in turn lend more to customers.”

He said in spite of the quest to attain the highest heights in universal banking operations, ADB continues to remain the number one financier in the agricultural sector as its core business.

“Lending to the agricultural sector increased by 64.5%. It also meant an increase in the share of agriculture of the total credit portfolio from 24.1% to 28.9%. The total amount of loan approvals made in the first half of this year for agricultural purposes increased by nearly 70% as compared with approvals made in the same period last year. The percentage of agriculture in our total lending portfolio will go up further by the end of this year,” he disclosed.

ADB has been acknowledged as one of the banks that have shot up fastest in the latest ranking of Africa’s Top-200 Banks. In its yearly list published in the August-September 2011 edition, The Africa Report survey rewarded ADB with a gain of 27 places to attain the 154 spot in the rankings.

The magazine noted that the best-performing banks in the list were those which achieved larger asset base, more profits, expanded branch networks and new customer-centred operations.

In addition to getting bigger, such banks improved better in their corporate governance, information technology, systems and back office and human resources management, healthier and more productive.

“I am really excited about the ranking. It shows the early gains of my bank’s three-year strategic plan (2010-2012),” the MD noted.

“We have recorded many achievements: the expansion in our branch network, our functioning new business model and structure, our re-packaged and newly-developed range of banking products, our blend of skills-set, our new high-version IT platform, and to top it all, the creditable financial performance recorded at the end of the year.”