Accra — Ghana is backpedalling out of a banking crisis as the government takes on debt to save the sector and vows to punish the executives responsible. Early in August, Ghana’s central bank revoked the licences of five banks and combined them into one — the newly created state-run Consolidated Bank — issuing 5.8-billion cedis ($1.2bn) in bonds to clear their debt. The Bank of Ghana accused the collapsed banks of a range of issues, including poor corporate governance, questionable transactions and dishonest reporting. The merger was just one step out of many that President Nana Akufo-Addo’s government has been forced to take in order to reform Ghana’s rotten banking sector, brought close to collapse as a result of bad governance and weak lending.
This past week, Ghana’s deputy central bank governor Elsie Addo Awadzi said in an interview that law enforcement agencies would "further investigate criminal behaviour" connected to the failed banks. Ghana faced a "now or never" decis...
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