Parliament hits at BOG for ditching discussions on Depositors Bill

quist

June 9, 2016 10:45 AM

The First Deputy Speaker of the house, Barton Oduro expressed concerns over the possibility of parliamentarians glossing over some important aspects of the bill due to the absence of both the Finance Ministry and the Bank of Ghana.

The First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Barton Oduro has taken a swipe at the Finance Ministry and the Bank for Ghana for failure to appear in parliament during the consideration of the Depositor’s Bill on Wednesday.

“The Governor of the Bank of Ghana when he finally came to parliament to address the DKM issue asked us [Parliament] to pass the depositors bill in order to help curb the microfinance scandals that rocked the country. Here we are, trying to pass the bill and none of them are around”, the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Barton Oduro said.

The depositor’s bill is to help insulate customers from the losses of microfinance companies, thereby protecting their deposits. The bill was necessitated by the numerous scandals that rocked the microfinance sector in Ghana that saw microfinance companies squander millions of Ghana Cedis belonging to customers.

This is not the first time parliament is complaining of the absence of the two entities on an important issue of national finance.

Earlier this year the Public Accounts Committee summoned the Governor of the Bank of Ghana over an anomaly in the accounts of the central bank as revealed by the Auditor General’s report for the 2012 financial year.

Again the governor failed to appear before parliament to address the house on the rogue microfinance scandal the rocked the country involving microfinance companies like DKM squandering GHC77 million of depositor’s money.

quist