Bank of Ghana (BoG) Governor, Dr. Johnson Asiama, has warned that the central bank will not allow huge sums of dollars to be withdrawn in cash from the system.
He stressed that the days when corporates could demand to walk away with $10 million over the counter are over.
If you look at one of the notices, for example, on large withdrawals, that again was in response to the feedback that we got from our investigations, where you find certain corporates who, you know, earned money through export rights into their FCA accounts, and then they would want to withdraw these in large amounts.
"Imagine a corporation wanting to withdraw $10 million over the counter. The fact is, what do they use that for? Because their payments are abroad, they don’t carry physical cash to go and settle anything.
And so the point we made there was, corporates like that do not need, you know, those cash locally, any payments they want to make abroad, will be made anyway. And so we said no to such corporations, they can afford to play in that regime.”
Dr. Asiama explained that the directive is not targeted at individuals who may require smaller amounts of dollars for personal use.
“For individuals like you and me, probably you need your few $100 or $200 to do something, that’s understandable. You can negotiate with your bank, and then you would have a choice, whether you want to take those few dollars, or you want to pay the commission, or you want them to change it into cedis for you, you are at ease to do that.”
Responding to concerns that the Bank of Ghana was being too tough on the market, Dr. Asiama dismissed such claims.
No, not at all. We are only taking advantage of what we are seeing to fix the market. It is like you have a soccer match. There’s a context within which the game has to be played, and so that’s exactly what we are doing.”
He revealed that intelligence reports show some individuals were taking huge sums of dollars out of the country without declaring them.
“If you look at the currency declaration context framework, for example, the intel we got was that some people actually take out, you know, large volumes of cash. People are carrying over a million dollars just out of Ghana, without declaring them.
Those are leakages, right? And so as a regulator, it’s for us to work together with the other regulators, GRA and the others, to ensure that if you have to carry such large sums, these are accounted for.
"These are declared. The sources are known, you know. And don’t forget, that’s also good for the anti-money laundering fight that we have on our hands.”
Dr. Asiama emphasised that the central bank is only setting clear rules to protect the market.
“We are just, you know, redefining, you know, the framework within which the market has to work and work efficiently. These are things we should have been enforcing, but given the context in which we are, we’ve seen clearly that we need to set those boundaries clearly so that the markets can function and function properly.”
He added that the directives were not unilateral decisions, but the result of wide consultations with the banks.
“Let me also explain that we do not just issue these notices. We met with the banks. We met with the CEOs of banks a number of times. We took on board, you know, the feedback from them.
"And so you will see that the banks are silent. They are not complaining. It’s because they were consulted. We thought through this together before the notices, you know, are issued. And so we are confident that the notices will.”
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