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Bank_Of_GhanaHead of faculty at the National Banking College, Nana Atuo Acheampong says the new Bank of Ghana formula for calculating interest rate in the country is efficient, and professed that when monitored and regulated properly could help control replication of the Barclays scandal in Ghana’s banking sector. 

Financial services regulators in the US and UK have fined Barclays bank £290m for attempting to rig interest rates at which banks lend to each other.
Barclays is alleged to have manipulated the libor rates. Libor rate is the abbreviation for the London interbank offered rate: it is the average interest rate estimated by leading banks in London that they would be charged when borrowing from other banks.

It is believed staff of the bank did this over a number of years, in an attempt to raise them for profit, and also, during the financial crisis, lowered them to hide the level of the Barclays’ financial distress.

Speaking on the issue on Multi TV’s current affairs program pm:EXPRESS on Joy News channel, Wednesday, Nana Acheampong was hopeful the Bank of Ghana's new formula could help standardize the banking sector to reduce to the barest minimum irregularities.
However, he was quick to add that the system was not a fool proof.

On why this standard of the Bank of Ghana exist and yet banks charge different rates, he explained that different source of funds determine the rate of interest charged by the banks.

He advised that with the proliferation of banks all over the country, the Bank of Ghana need to put in place efficient monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to ensure the banks charge fair rate to avoid undue increase in interest rate or bloating of profit margins to deceive the general public

Nana Atuo Acheampong was of the view that instead of the four regulatory bodies currently in the system, the number should be reduced to two bodies so that the scarce resources available to these four will be amalgamated and put to proficient use by the two.

The UK bank scandal which has affected Barclays and about a dozen more banks has seen 3.7 million pounds been wiped of Barclays stocks.

Source;myjoyonline.com

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