Societe Generale (SG) Ghana says it is ready to increase support for small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs), following the meeting of the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) Minimum Capital Requirement (MCR).
Mr Hakim Ouzzani, the Managing Director of SG Ghana, who was speaking at a cocktail event with some clients of the bank in Accra at the weekend, said the bank was focusing on SMEs because they were the engine of growth of every economy and source of job creation and employment worldwide.
He said support for the SMEs segment, the drive for digital banking and branch expansion, were key part of a strategy to improving on the bank’s market share from the current five per cent to 7.5 per cent by the year 2022.
Mr Ouzzani said a market share of 7.5 per cent would position the bank among the leading banks in the country. The Managing Director also said among the new strategic focus of SG Ghana was to be the "relationship-focused bank," and be closer to its clients.
He said the Ghanaian market remained a priority to SG Ghana and the bank was in for the long haul to support the development of the economy. Mr Ouzzani said so far SG Ghana had supported development projects in the areas of energy, road construction, and telecommunication to the tune of $653 million while the SG Group had invested $1.4 billion over the past ten years.
The Deputy Managing Director of SG Ghana, Ernest Kuetche said the bank was now in a better position to serve its corporate and SME clients. He said the balance sheet of the bank had been expanded placing the bank in a good position to support big ticket deals in both the public and private sectors.
"The attainment of the MCR has positioned SG Ghana to undertake big ticket projects," he said. The Chief Financial Officer of SG Ghana, Mohamed Fehri said the bank was able to meet the MCR ahead of time without raising a loan. The feat, he said, was achieved through the issue of bonus shares of GHc97 million, a right issue which brought in additional GHc168.9 million capital, saying that, the bank already had GHc138 million in stated capital as at December 2017.
SG Ghana currently has 38 branches across the country with 14 new branches yet to be inaugurated and has about 200,000 customers, comprising SMEs, corporate and individual customers.
