- Ghana Needs Specialised Industrial Bank to Unlock Long-Term Capital — Deloitte Partner
Ghana will struggle to achieve its industrialisation ambitions unless it builds a financial system capable of funding factories, processing plants and other productive investments over much longer periods, according to Yaw Appiah Lartey, Deloitte Africa’s Infrastructure and Capital Projects leader and Partner in Strategy and Transactions at Deloitte Ghana.
Mr Lartey has called for the establishment of a specialised bank for industrial development, arguing that Ghana could draw lessons from Nigeria’s Bank of Industry, which provides targeted financing to businesses in manufacturing and other productive sectors.
His proposal highlights a central contradiction in Ghana’s economic transformation agenda.
The country wants to reduce its dependence on raw commodity exports, develop manufacturing, strengthen local supply chains and increase domestic participation in strategic industries. Yet companies seeking to make large, long-term investments continue to face expensive credit, short repayment periods and demanding collateral requirements.
“So, the Bank of Industry in Nigeria is specifically supporting industrial development, including oil and gas, and they have interest rates as low as 5% to 7% for companies and businesses,” Mr Lartey said. “It’s something that elsewhere in Africa, including Ghana, we can learn that and have a bank that’s established for industry.”
The argument goes beyond simply creating another state-owned financial institution.
At its core is the question of whether Ghana’s existing banking architecture is suited to the type of economy the country says it wants to build.
Commercial banks are generally structured around liquidity, risk-adjusted returns and relatively predictable repayment cycles. Industrial projects operate differently. A manufacturing plant, petrochemical facility, processing operation or oilfield-services company can require years of construction, commissioning and market development before generating enough cash flow to service substantial debt.
That creates a financing gap even where the underlying project may be economically viable.
A specialised industrial bank could potentially provide longer-tenor loans, project finance, guarantees and other forms of patient capital that are more closely aligned with the life cycle of major industrial investments.
For Ghana, that could help translate industrial policy from statements of ambition into factories, machinery, technology, logistics infrastructure, skilled employment and productive capacity.
Mr Lartey said Nigeria’s Bank of Industry offers an important reference point because its mandate is specifically focused on industrial development rather than conventional commercial banking.
“If we need to establish any financial institution to support industrial growth, we should look at the Nigerian Bank of Industry,” he said.
But the Nigerian model also raises an important question for Ghana: whether a new state-backed institution can provide affordable financing without becoming another source of fiscal risk.
Ghana has had mixed experiences with publicly supported financial institutions. A new industrial bank could become costly if credit decisions are politicised, projects are poorly appraised or weak loans repeatedly require government recapitalisation.
Cheap capital without strong underwriting would not solve the industrial financing problem; it could simply transfer commercial risk to taxpayers.
For such an institution to succeed, project selection would need to be based on transparent commercial and developmental criteria, supported by independent credit decisions, professional management and effective monitoring.
Capitalisation would be equally important. A poorly funded industrial bank would be unable to support major projects at meaningful scale and could ultimately drift into competing with existing commercial banks for ordinary business customers instead of filling a genuine financing gap.
One option would be to design the institution as a catalyst rather than the sole financier of projects.
Government and development-partner capital could be used to absorb selected risks, provide guarantees or anchor financing structures that attract commercial banks, pension funds and institutional investors into industrial projects.
Such a model could multiply the impact of public funds while limiting the fiscal burden on the state.
Financing, however, is only one part of Ghana’s industrialisation challenge.
Mr Lartey also stressed the need to strengthen the capabilities of local businesses, particularly SMEs seeking to participate in oil and gas.
“We have to build the capacity of our local SMEs, so the local operators need to be empowered,” he said. “If they are not empowered technically and they don’t have the competence, we probably cannot develop them to become top giants in the oil and gas space.”
That distinction is critical. Access to capital does not automatically create competitive companies. Ghanaian businesses also need technology, technical expertise, stronger governance, quality certification, management systems and the capacity to meet sophisticated procurement, engineering, environmental and safety standards.
Without those capabilities, local-content policies may increase participation without necessarily producing large domestic companies capable of competing internationally.
A specialised industrial-finance institution could therefore have a wider role than simply lending money.
It could help companies structure bankable projects, fund feasibility studies, provide technical assistance and work with international development-finance institutions to bring additional capital into Ghanaian businesses.
That would address another persistent constraint: many promising industrial proposals fail to secure financing not because the ideas are inherently weak, but because feasibility work is inadequate, cash-flow projections are uncertain, corporate structures are weak or risk-mitigation mechanisms are insufficient.
The proposal nevertheless raises a broader institutional question. Ghana already has development-finance institutions, meaning policymakers would need to determine whether the better solution is to establish a new bank or restructure, recapitalise and specialise existing institutions.
The objective should not be institutional duplication. It should be a financing architecture aligned with the country’s industrial priorities.
That matters particularly in Ghana’s current fiscal environment.
After years of debt accumulation and pressure on public finances, any new state-supported institution would need to demonstrate that it can operate sustainably without creating hidden liabilities for government.
The stronger model may therefore be one in which public capital provides an initial foundation while private and institutional investors supply much of the additional financing.
Ultimately, Mr Lartey’s proposal points to a deeper question about Ghana’s development model.
Industrialisation cannot be delivered through tax incentives, legislation and government programmes alone. It requires entrepreneurs to access patient capital, acquire technology, build skilled workforces and scale companies capable of competing across African and global markets.
A specialised industrial bank could become part of that ecosystem, but only if it operates as a professional development-finance institution rather than a channel for politically directed lending.
Ghana has natural resources, a sizeable domestic market, access to the African Continental Free Trade Area and an established private sector. The unresolved issue is whether it can build the financial machinery needed to convert those advantages into sustained productive investment.
