Agona Kwanyako(C/R), Nov 9, GNA - Mr John Oremus Arkoh, the District Chief Executive for Agona East, has appealed to Rural and Community banks to pay dividend regularly to shareholders to attract other corporate bodies to increase their share capitals. Mr Arkoh said this when he addressed the 24th Annual General Meeting of the Agona Rural Bank at Agona Kwanyako.

He said failure by some rural banks to pay attractive dividends to the shareholders had discour aged people from investing in the rural banking industry. He urged rural banks to improve upon their share capitals, adding that the current banking industry needed adequate capital to meet numerous challenges facing in order compete against big banks. Mr Arkoh appealed to them to assist small scale enterprises to enable hem expand their businesses.

Mr Arkoh said the government had secured 7 million Euros concessionary loan from the German government to assist Rural and Community banks for the provision of E-Zwich cards and Automated Teller Machines (ATM) for effective work in rural areas. Major Ben Donkoh (RTD), the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the bank, said the bank granted loans and advances totaling 717,293 in 2009 as against 687,810 Ghana Cedis in 2008.

He said the bank declared a profit of 22,541 Ghana cedis in 2009 as against a loss of 28,584 Ghana cedis in 2008. Major Donkoh urged the shareholders to buy more share to increase the share capital to meet the Bank of Ghana Requirement of 150,000 Ghana Cedis.