Total liabilities recorded by the Central Bank for the year ended 2020, amounted to Ghs 115 billion.
As contained in the Quarterly Statistical Bulletin released by the Bank and perused by norvanreports, the Central Bank’s liabilities on a year-on-year basis increased by some Ghs 35.6 billion, as liabilities recorded by the Central Bank at end-December 2019, stood at Ghs 79.9 billion.
In the banking or you will say the financial services space, liabilities is often viewed as an ‘asset’ and not debt due to the fact that a major component of a bank’s liabilities are deposits made by customers which the bank can in turn use for credit creation by lending the monies out other customers as loans.
Of the liabilities posted for end-December 2020, domestic liabilities accounted for Ghs 20 billion with foreign liabilities also accounting for Ghs 29 billion.
“Other liabilities”, the Bank noted, accounted for Ghs 41.6 billion of its total liabilities.
Deposits from government – Ghs 10.3 billion – accounted for the majority of the regulator’s domestic liabilities, followed closely by some Ghs 9.3 billion deposits also made by the various commercial banks in the country.
Deposits from public institutions, Bank of Ghana (BoG) further noted formed only Ghs 276 million of its liabilities.
The Central Bank, with regards to its foreign liabilities, failed to give a breakdown of the items that constituted its foreign liabilities, but one can always expect funds realised from issued Eurobonds and other foreign loans taken by government to be a major component of the bank’s foreign liabilities.
In terms of its total assets, foreign assets held by the Central Bank at end-December 2020, amounted to Ghs 43.5 billion from the end-December 2019 figure of Ghs 40.2 billion.
Items that made up the Central Bank’s assets include Special Drawing Rights (SDR) with the IMF, foreign currency and balances with banks, gold bars holdings and foreign securities.
On the domestic front, the Bank’s claims on government (assets) with respect to treasury bills purchased by the BoG as well as loans and advances made to government, amounted to Ghs 42.1 billion.
