CBG Bank secures GH¢2.5 billion fresh capital to improve liquidity – MD

Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG) has secured GH¢2.5 billion to shore up its capital and build the resiliency of the balance sheet of the bank.

The new capital was released to the bank by the Ministry of Finance as part of measures by the government to position the bank for further growth.

The Managing Director (MD) of CBG, Mr Wilson Addo, disclosed this in Accra yesterday during an interaction with some se­lected journalists on the five years journey of the bank. He said the new capital injection had further improvedon the capital position of the bank.

“The Bank is solvent and liquid to discharge its core mandate of financial intermediation without any challenges. CBG is ideally positioned to continue its growth trajectory and most importantly to continue to make a positive impact on the economy,” he said.

Mr Addo said CBG this and the coming years would focus to increase its loan support to Small and Medium-scale Enterprise (SME) sector, agriculture, manu­facturing as part of measures to diversify the investment portfolio of the bank.

On SME financing, the MD said the objective was to maintain the bank’s leadership in the sector.

He said CBG had achieved

 significant milestones, including building cutting-edge technolo­gy platforms, impactful lending, and achieving leadership in SME finance.

“In the SME sector, CBG has played a pivotal role, providing GH¢1.6 billion in loans to over 5,600 businesses, introducing innovative programmes such as the ‘CBG SME Adesua Series’, and optimising loan processing for swift access. The initiatives in the SME sector have earned the bank various awards, including the ‘Eu­romoney Award for SME Market Leadership’ in 2022 and 2023,” Mr Addo stated.

According to Mr Addo, the SME sector remained critical to the growth of the Ghanaian econ­omy and creating employment for the youth.

The Managing Director further said there was the need for more investment to be channelled to agriculture to help address the challenges facing the sector and boost food production, and noted the new focus of CBG this and the coming years was agriculture financing.

Mr Addo said CBG was partnering with Ghana Incen­tive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending, which had expertise in the sector, to support the agriculture sector.

He said the bank had already disbursed about five million dollars to finance the sector, pointing out that the fresh capital injection had further built the financial capacity of the CBG to lend more to the sector.

On the manufacturing sector, the MD of CBG said the bank’s focus was local businesses as part of measures to build more local industries.

Mr Addo said the CBG in the past five years had participated in loans totalling GH¢2.35 billion, either as lead arranger or trans­action advisor, benefitting crucial sectors like energy, tourism and agriculture.

Responding to the bank’s Non-performing Loans position, which stood at 15 per cent last year, the MD said the bank’s NPL was below the industry average of 20 per cent.

He said the bank was recoup­ing some of the bad debts and was hopeful the NPL position would reduce to about 7 per cent this year.

 BY KINGSLEY ASARE

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