Dr Edward Brown, Senior Director, Research and Policy Engagements, ACET The economy is in dire need of a development bank that can provide long term funding for critical areas, a latest survey by the Africa Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET) has stated.
“Development banks bring in the right funding for sectors that will not be interesting for commercial-seeking financing institutions,” the survey report noted.
The two development banks, the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) and the National Investment Bank (NIB), according to the report, are currently not operating according to the mandate that established them as development banks, due to political interferences by governments in their operations which made them veer off their specific roles.
Coupled with this challenge is also the financial positions of the two banks which potentially undermine the developmental roles they were meant to play within the economy.
Presenting the report at a validation workshop in Accra, the Head of Private Sector Development of ACET , Mr Charles Odoom, explained that the operations of the two development banks were still focused on the developmental agenda of ruling governments without living up to their mandates.
“Both ADB and NIB are the extension of government, thus the government remains the major stakeholder of these banks and still have strong footprints in their governance make-up.
Considering the contemporary structure of a development bank, it has been established that both ADB and NIB do not fit as national development banks,” he said.
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Workshop
The workshop was organised in collaboration with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) to discuss “The Developmental Activities and Impacts of National Development Banks, The Case of Ghana”.
It brought together government officials, civil society organisations, policy makers, and industry representatives to validate and discuss the findings identified in The Political Economy of National Development Banks in Ghana Report.Mr Odoom said the study which focused on supporting economic transformation covered four countries; Ghana, Rwanda, Côte d’Ivoire and Tunisia.“We have taken an initial observation here in Ghana and we will compare across the three other countries and benchmark them against best practices where we would have completely come up with a report to give real recommendations,” he stated. The need for a development bank A Senior Director, Research and Policy Engagements at ACET, Dr Edward Brown, also explained that there would always be some political interference in the operations of development […]
