Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the Minister of Information-designate has explained why the Bank of Ghana collapsed his microfinance company during the banking clean-up exercise in 2019.
Kojo Oppong Nkrumah was the Managing Director of West Brownstone Capital which was the largest shareholder of the microfinance firm, Oval Microfinance Limited.
Giving reasons why the company was collapsed at the Appointments Committee during his vetting, he said he was “not in a position to inject any further capital in the organisation” when the directors and management of Oval Microfinance “reported difficulties and requested recapitalisation.”
According to him, the company’s woes were compounded by the August 2019 hike in the minimum capital requirement demanded by the Central Bank.
He said he [Kojo Oppong Nkrumah] came “to the view that it [Oval microfinance] was in breach of what the new statutory requirement was.”
“I, as a [majority] shareholder, and many of the other shareholders could not reinvest in the organisation as was being required by the directors and the management and the Bank of Ghana effectively revoked its license accordingly,” he added.
He noted that he “was not indebted to the organisation [Oval Microfinance] as at the time the Bank of Ghana was conducting its exercise.”
Oval Microfinance Limited was part of the 347 microfinance institutions in the country the Bank of Ghana revoked.
Out of the 347 microfinance institutions, 192 of the companies were insolvent, whiles the remaining 155 were insolvent but had ceased operations.
The withdrawal of the license was done pursuant to section 123 (1) of the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act, 2016 (Act 930).
