The Member of Parliament for Bantama and Parliament’s finance committee Daniel Okyem Aboagye is calling for the prosecution of heads of microfinance companies whose licenses have been revoked by the Bank of Ghana.
Among other managerial, credit and liquidity lapses, some of the 347 affected companies were cited for fraud and diversion of depositors’ funds into private businesses.
The receiver of the affected MFIs PricewaterhouseCoopers has begun its audit and validation to recover assets and pay off depositors and other business concerns.
Mr Okyem Aboagye who has long years of experience in Microfinance both in Ghana and Asia, insists the managers of these institutions have to be charged as government cannot continue to expend tax payers’ money for people’s inactions.
“I do expect that some of the practitioners that diverted people’s monies unto something for themselves will be brought to face the law. If you have taken people’s money and you cannot explain, I believe it is just fair that I and you the tax payers don’t pay for it. People should be made to cough up what they have squandered so that our liabilities will be smaller,” he fumed.
The Bantama legislator will not hang the regulator but insisted that the microfinance industry had come a long way from its days of non-existent regulatory regimes into an era of proper structures and legal frameworks to man the sector.
Mr Okyem Aboagye described the exercise as a bitter pill that the nation has to secure the sustainability of the financial sector.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FMIvan Heathcote – Fumador