A new Board of Directors has been inaugurated for adb.
The number of directors had dropped following the annulment of four institutional shareholders in the bank by the Bank of Ghana, last month.
The four companies are; Starmount Company Limited, EDC investment, SIC Financial Services as well as Belstar Company limited.
According to the central bank, their shares were annulled because they purchased the shares under suspicious means.
Speaking at the inauguration on Wednesday, August 29, 2018, Chairman of the Board, Alex Bernasko said the bank should meet the new minimum capital requirement by December this year.
He explains that this will follow an aggressive pursuit of all outstanding loans due the bank.
“We are drawing up a recapitalization plan, in fact we already had one but with all the things happening we need to fine tune as we go along. In fact one area that will help us a lot is recovery; we have so many non-performing assets out there. If we do very aggressive and extensive recovery, retrieving these funds which are out there will make it very easy for us to meet the capitalization but I’m confident we will meet the four hundred million by the end of this year,” he said.
Per the annulment of the shares, six former directors were removed.
They include; Mr. Patrick Kingsley-Nyinah, Mr. Kwabena Dapaah-Siakwan, Nana Ama Serwaa Bonsu, Mr. Frank Kwame Osei, Dr. Adu Anane Antwi and Professor David Abdulai.
They have since been replaced by Dr. Mark Assibey Yeboah, Abena Osei Asare, Professor Peter Quartey, Mr. Kwesi Korboe as well as Madam Mary Abla Kessie.
Speaking at the inauguration, a Deputy Finance Minister, Charles Adu Boahen charged the Board to work to achieve their core mandate of supporting the growth of Ghana’s agric sector.
“As you may be aware, the contribution of the agricultural sector to GDP has been declining over the last six years from 22.9 % in 2012 to 18.3 % in 2017, while the contribution of the services sector has been increasing over the same period”.
“Though ADB remains the leading financial institution in agriculture financing in the country, its total credits to the agricultural sector has reduced over the last four years while the banks credit to the services sector has increased over the same period”.