Minister-designate for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, has revealed plans by government to convert the National Investment Bank (NIB) to an industrial bank.
The decision by government, the Minister-designate pointed out to the Appointments Committee of Parliament during the second-round of his vetting on Friday, March 26, is to provide lending to the nation’s industry sector to facilitate economic growth.
“NIB has been a difficult one because of its nature, but NIB for us will be that industrial bank; we have put some money into that, we need to resolve final execution as to know what we do”, he said.
“So you have ADB doing agric and NIB doing industrial, but not as a commercial bank. So the issue of rationalization is at the juncture. I think both the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Ghana are in agreement as to the new NIB that we want and surely by mid-year, you will have clarity on how we are going to position that”, he further noted.
Adding government has a clear strategy of positioning NIB as an industrial bank.
“We are very clear on our support for agric, that is why GAT put money into agric. We have taken our time to understand NIB to see the structure we want; we don’t want it to be a commercial bank. We expect that it will be an industrial and therefore will be able to make a representation in the regions – they have to support industry – and therefore we’ve kept it alive GHc1.3 billion over this time,” he remarked.
“We need to now assess the final numbers- the amount that will be put in to make NIB to become the original industrial bank and not a retail bank,” he emphasised.
NIB is among five Ghanaian banks that benefited from the Ghana Amalgamated Trust Fund capital injection to sustain their operations.
