A Deputy Director of Communication of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Ernest Owusu Bempah, has urged the Bank of Ghana (BoG) to provide a detailed and clear explanation of the issues surrounding the new headquarters that it is building and the GH¢60.8 billion loss it incurred last year.
Owusu-Bempah said that these issues are becoming a major headache for the government, especially its communicators, and that the central bank needs to explain them in layman’s terms.
The Minority in Parliament has been asking the BoG to provide answers to questions about the new headquarters, including information on the procurement process for the land and the names of the consultants and project managers.
The Minority is requesting, among other things, information on the processes involved in the procurement of the land for the construction of the new headquarters building.
They also want to know the names of consultants and project managers.
Speaking to journalists in Accra on Monday, August 21, Owusu-Bempah said, “The whole brouhaha with the Bank of Ghana is becoming a problem for the government and the party in power, and so if they have anything to explain, they should. As a political party, we do not condone wrongdoing or corruption.
“This particular issue is becoming an albatross around the neck of the government and the party in power. So they need to come clean. We don’t understand the explanation they are giving, so they need to come out and explain it better.
“The Governor of the Bank of Ghana needs to come clean so that the government will look good. This issue is becoming a danger to the political fortunes of the party in the 2024 elections. Financially, we are going through turbulence, but as a party, we have done a lot in managing the economy, and then the next day you hear this scandal coming from the Bank of Ghana.
“As a spokesperson for the NPP, I want to tell the Bank of Ghana to come clean and let us know exactly what is going on. They cannot just explain things the way they want.
“There is an allegation of missing money and another allegation of building a $250 million headquarters. This is a serious matter. The Bank of Ghana is a major financial institution that runs the entire economic activities of this country. So you cannot just throw out information like that and expect ordinary Ghanaians to understand what is going on. So they need to come clean and let the people of Ghana understand so that party communicators can go out there and explain the issues better.”
The Minority in Parliament has given the Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison, and his two deputies, Dr. Maxwell Opoku-Afari and Elsie Addo Awadzi, 21 days to resign following the bank’s loss of GH¢60.8 billion in 2022.
The Minority Leader, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, wrote to the Accra Regional Command of the Ghana Police Service on Monday, August 21, to notify them of the planned protest to “occupy” the Bank of Ghana.
“The purpose of this protest is to express our revulsion against the illegal printing of money (about GH¢80 billion) between 2021 and 2022 by the Bank of Ghana for the corrupt Akufo-Addo/Bawumia/NPP government, which led to a hyper-inflation rate of 54.1% in December 2022,” the Minority said in its letter.
