Deputy minister of Finance Thomas Nyarko Ampem speaking at the conference
The Deputy Minister of Finance, Thomas Nyarko Ampem, has announced that the government has taken a transformative decision to strengthen GCB Bank and reposition it as the best state-owned bank.
Ampem said the Ministry of Finance had directed government agencies in the country to engage all financial transactions with the GCB Bank to enable it to perform better as was being done in other countries.
The Deputy Finance Minister said this at the 6th Quadrennial national Delegates conference of the Professional and Management Staff Union (PMSU) of GCB Bank in Ho.
The GCB Bank Delegates conference, which was attended by three hundred delegates, was on the theme: “Strengthening the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises Sector for Economic Transformation in Ghana, the Role of GCB Bank PLC”.
Ampem explained that GCB Bank is a state-owned financial institution, and it did not make economic sense for the government to support foreign banks in Ghana to make profits to develop their respective countries.
“At the same time, the GCB Bank would continue to struggle to survive,” he said.
The Deputy Finance Minister commended the PMSU of GCB Bank for creating an enabling working environment for workers to contribute meaningfully to the bank’s development over the years.
The Managing Director of the GCB Bank, Alhassan Farihan, announced that the management of the bank had decided to invest in human resources to ensure that it harnessed the various talents to provide the best services to SMEs, which he stressed were the engine of economic growth.
Farihan said conscious efforts were being made to introduce mobile loan services to enable the GCB Bank to effectively promote businesses of SMEs with available loan facilities at low interest rates to enable them to create jobs.
The MD said GCB Bank had the best talents in the country, which he stressed needed to be developed to ensure that the bank would remain the best in rendering services to SMEs in the country.
Farihan said the objective of the GCB Bank was to become a bank of choice in the African sub-region.
The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the GCB Bank, Professor Joshua Alarbi, said the vision of the Board of Directors was to make the bank an international bank, where first-class banking services would be provided.
According to Professor Alarbi, GCB Bank would soon extend its services to Mali, Niger, and the Gambia, saying the bank had, over the years, established its unique performance in the country, and the time had come to extend such services to other African countries.
The PMSU Chairman of GCB Bank, Kamail Mohammed Ismail, said the era where unions only bargained for increased salaries and improved conditions of growth of their institutions.
