ghananlpcommunity/ghana-gov-speeches-sentences huggingface dataset:
How should new financing and existing impaired exposures be treated under IFRS 9 and prudential requirements, so that the new facility is assessed fairly while existing losses remain fully recognised?
How should risks and responsibilities be allocated among lenders, practitioners, shareholders, management and existing creditors, including where a rescue fails?
So that today produces more than discussion, I would ask the organisers to submit a consolidated record of your deliberations and recommendations to the Bank and the participating institutions, so that what is said here feeds directly into the work under way.
Conclusion Ladies and gentlemen, the framework we develop will be tested in real credit committees, considering real businesses and real risks.
Our objective is not a system that avoids risk.
Such a system would finance nothing worth financing.
It is a system that un derstands risk, prices it properly, manages it actively and holds the capacity to absorb losses when judgement proves wrong.
The practical test is whether a credit committee facing the decision I described can reach it on the merits: able to say yes to the right business on the right terms, to say no where further financing would merely extend decline, and to know the difference .
Business rescue and financial stability are compatible objectives, but rescue must rest on commercial viability, transparency and accountability, and never on concealed losses or regulatory forbearance.
I thank all participants for their commitment to this work.
With these remarks, I declare this forum duly open and wish you fruitful deliberations.
Remarks by Dr.
Johnson Pandit Asiama, Governor, Bank of Ghana Africa Pension Supervisors Association (APSA) Annual Conference Kempinski Hotel, Accra | Thursday, 30 July 2026 | 9:30 a.m.
Topic: Pension Systems and Financial Stability: Building Resilient Financial Ecosystems for Africa Your Excellency, the President of the Republic of Ghana, Honourable Minister for Finance, Chairman of the Board of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority, Chief Executive Officer of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority, Chairperson of the Africa Pension Supervisors Association, Heads of Pension Regulatory Authorities, Governors and Deputy Governors of Central Banks, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a privilege to join you this morning at the Annual Conference of the Africa Pension Supervisors Association (APSA).
I congratulate the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA) and APSA for convening this important gathering at a time when Africa’s financial systems are undergoing profound transformation.
The topic of “Pension Systems and Financial Stability” invites us to consider not only how retirement income is protected, but also how pension systems contribute to resilient financial systems and sustainable economic development.
Colleagues, for the worker making a contribution today, financial stability is not an institutional concept.
It is a promise.
It is the expectation that, thirty or forty years from now, the records will still be accurate, the assets will still be secure, the institutions will still be standing, and the money will still have meaningful value.
That expectation is an extraordinary act of confidence in the financial system.
PENSION SYSTEMS AND THE CHANGING FINANCIAL LANDSCAPE For many years, discussions on financial stability focused predominantly on the banking sector.
Strong banks, adequate capital, sufficient liquidity and effective payment systems 1 were rightly considered the cornerstones of a stable financial system.
They remain fundamental.
But they are no longer the whole picture.
Today’s financial system is broader, more interconnected and increasingly shaped by non-bank financial institutions, digital innovation and new sources of systemic risk.
Financial stability can therefore no longer be viewed through the lens of individual institutions or sectors.
Pension systems are a clear example of why that wider view is necessary.
Across Africa, pension assets under management now exceed US$420 billion.
In Ghana, the 2025 Financial Stability Review reports that pension assets grew by 26.3 per cent in one year, from GH¢86.23 billion in 2024 to GH¢108.88 billion in 2025, and that the pensions industry accounted for 16.8 per cent of Ghana’s financial-sector assets.
At that scale, pensions are not peripheral to the financial system.
They are one of its major pools of long-term domestic capital.
From a financial-stability perspective, the connections between that pool of savings and the rest of the financial system operate through three principal channels.
I want to take each in turn.
First, the macroeconomic channel A pension is a claim on future purchasing power.
Whatever a portfolio contains, the value of that claim depends on the value of the currency in which it is denominated, and on the interest rates and market conditions that determine what those savings earn along the way.
High and persistent inflation is therefore not an abstract statistic to a pensioner.
It is the erosion of food, medicine, rent and dignity.
Ghana has learned this in the most direct way available.
Headline inflation peaked at 54.1 per cent in December 2022.
It stood at 5.3 per cent in June 2026.
I offer these figures because price stability is a necessary condition for preserving the real value of long-term savings.
It is the contribution a central bank makes to every retirement account in the country, and one that no supervisory framework can substitute for.
It is also the channel for which the Bank of Ghana is accountable.
Second, the market and interconnectedness channel Private pension assets reached GH¢79.8 billion in 2025.
Within those portfolios, the share held in Government of Ghana securities declined from 72.9 per cent to 64.5 per cent.
The 2 share in ordinary shares and non-redeemable preference shares rose from 5.7 per cent to 12.2 per cent, while bank and other market securities increased from 8.6 per cent to 14.0 per cent.
Let me be clear about how I am using these figures.
I do not present them as a judgment on the investment decisions of pension funds.
Those decisions are made by trustees within the regulatory framework administered by NPRA.
My interest, as a central banker, is in what their growing scale and market connections mean for monetary and financial conditions.
Read together, these figures show one large pool of long-term savings with material exposures across sovereign, banking and equity markets.
Changes in the size and composition of those exposures can affect demand for securities, market liquidity, price discovery and investor confidence.
The relationship also runs in both directions: interest rates, asset prices, sovereign conditions and market liquidity affect the value and performance of pension portfolios.
This has implications for central banks.
The channels through which monetary and financial conditions pass through an economy now extend well beyond bank balance sheets.
Monetary policy still works through bank funding, credit and expectations.
But it also works through the yield curve, asset prices and market liquidity, and large institutional investors influence each of these through their demand for government securities, bank instruments and equities.
Pension systems therefore matter to a central bank not because the central bank supervises them, but because their scale, long horizon and market connections increasingly shape the conditions in which monetary and financial stability are maintained.
This is, on balance, a welcome development.
Because their liabilities run over decades rather than quarters, pension funds can hold longer-duration assets, provide patient capital and, where liquidity and risk-management arrangements are sound, absorb rather than amplify short-term market volatility.
My interest is not in slowing that growth.
It is in seeing it clearly.
And third, the operational and confidence channel The third channel is the one least often counted, and in some respects the most consequential.
A pension system holds not only assets, but records of promises extending across generations.
Contribution histories, account balances and beneficiary information must 3 remain secure, accurate and accessible through technological change, institutional transition and operational shock.
A promise that cannot be evidenced is not a promise.
Cyber resilience, business continuity and data integrity are therefore not administrative matters.
They are part of pension security, and part of financial stability.
Confidence belongs in this channel too, because confidence is not only an outcome of stability.
It is one of the mechanisms through which stability is produced.
It sustains participation, it supports long-term saving, and it allows markets and institutions to function through periods of stress.
It is also, once lost, difficult and costly to rebuild.
Taken together, these three channels explain why pension resilience can no longer be considered within the pension sector alone.
● Macroeconomic risk requires a stable policy environment.
● Cross-market exposure requires coordinated surveillance.
● Operational and confidence risk requires resilient systems, comparable data and cooperation across institutional boundaries.
SEEING THE SYSTEM AS A WHOLE Ladies and gentlemen, no single regulator can see all these connections alone: ● the pension supervisor sees scheme governance, liabilities, contributions and portfolio risks; ● the securities regulator sees issuers, markets, asset managers and trading conditions; ● the insurance supervisor sees underwriting risks, long-term liabilities and connections between insurers and other financial institutions; ● the central bank sees banks, payment systems, monetary conditions and system-wide liquidity; ● the Ministry of Finance sees the fiscal and sovereign dimension; and 4 ● the deposit protection authority brings the perspective of depositor confidence and resolution.
Each perspective is necessary.
None, on its own, is complete.
This is precisely why Ghana’s Financial Stability Council matters.
It was established in recognition of this changing landscape and brings together the Bank of Ghana, the Ministry of Finance, the National Pensions Regulatory Authority, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Insurance Commission and the Ghana Deposit Protection Corporation.
The Council provides an institutional platform for identifying emerging vulnerabilities, sharing information, coordinating policy responses and strengthening the resilience of Ghana’s financial system.
It does not replace the mandate of any member institution.
Its value lies in bringing those perspectives together.
The underlying principle is simple: systemic risks rarely respect institutional boundaries, and our response cannot stop at those boundaries either.
That cross-sector view depends on data.
If information is fragmented, delayed or defined differently across sectors, a connected financial system can appear to regulators as a collection of separate balance sheets.
By the time the connections become visible, the vulnerability may already have travelled.
Effective macroprudential oversight therefore requires timely, comparable and sufficiently granular data, supported by modern supervisory technology and closer information sharing.
Authorities must be able to identify common exposures, monitor risks closer to real time and undertake forward-looking analysis.
The Africa Pension and Asset Management Data Hub to be discussed at this conference is especially relevant for that reason.
Better market visibility is part of the infrastructure of financial stability.
RESILIENCE IN A CHANGING RISK ENVIRONMENT Ladies and gentlemen, digitisation presents the same combination of opportunity and risk.
Mobile money, digital identity, electronic contribution platforms and technology-enabled supervision can improve efficiency, expand access to pension products, strengthen compliance, improve reporting and raise the quality of pension-sector data.
These tools 5 matter particularly for workers in the informal economy, whom conventional channels have often struggled to reach.
The risks evolve alongside the opportunities, and they converge on that third the operational and confidence channel.
As administration, record-keeping and payment move onto shared digital infrastructure, an operational failure in one place can reach institutions that have no commercial relationship with one another.
Artificial intelligence introduces model and conduct risks into processes that were previously manual and auditable.
Climate shocks affect not only asset values but the contribution capacity of the workers whose livelihoods are exposed.
What these have in common is that none of them is contained within a single balance sheet or a single supervisory mandate.
For Africa, this is an opportunity.
Our financial systems are still evolving, allowing us to integrate resilience into new frameworks and infrastructure from the outset.
Innovation and resilience must advance together.
The National Pensions Regulatory Authority has an important role within this broader ecosystem.
The 2025 Financial Stability Review records the completion of its risk-based supervisory system, the review and update of eight operational guidelines, and the integration of ICT governance and data-protection issues into supervisory processes.
These measures strengthen not only pension supervision but Ghana’s wider financial resilience.
APSA provides a valuable platform through which such experience can be shared across the continent.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Financial stability ultimately depends on confidence: in the governance of institutions, the integrity of markets, the security of financial infrastructure and the capacity of authorities to respond when risks emerge.
As Africa’s pension systems expand, their resilience will increasingly shape that of the wider financial system.
Our collective responsibility is not only to strengthen individual institutions, but also to understand the connections between them.
Decades from now, the worker contributing today will not judge us by the number of institutions represented at this conference, or by the quality of our communiqués.
She will 6 judge the system by whether its promise was kept: whether the record is correct, whether the assets are there, and whether her savings still provide meaningful security in retirement.
I wish you productive deliberations and every success in your conference.
131st Monetary Policy Committee Meeting Opening Remarks by Dr Johnson Pandit Asiama Governor, Bank of Ghana 17th Floor, Tower Block, Bank Square | Monday, 20 July 2026 Good morning, and welcome to the 131st Monetary Policy Committee Meeting.
I extend a warm welcome to our external members and to the staff team whose analytical work will inform our deliberations over the coming days.
At the 130th meeting, the Committee held the Monetary Policy Rate at 14.0 percent and, in the same decision, replaced the dynamic Cash Reserve Ratio framework with a uniform requirement of 20 percent to be held in domestic currency.
Against significant ext ernal uncertainty, the Committee judged that strengthening the operational framework was, at that moment, a more appropriate response than adjusting the policy rate.
A related development also falls within this review period: with effect from 1 July, the Bank ceased prefinancing the Ghana Gold Board's gold purchases through its auction arrangements.
This represents an important change in the sources of domestic liquidity and will form part of our assessment this week.
Over the course of this meeting, the Committee will assess how those measures have affected liquidity conditions, monetary policy transmission and broader macroeconomic outcomes, and what they imply for the policy stance the Committee should adopt this week.
The Global Environment Turning to the broader environment, global developments have broadly evolved along the lines we anticipated at our previous meeting, though downside risks have become more pronounced.
The mid-June ceasefire briefly eased tensions and allowed oil prices to retrace much of their earlier increase.
Renewed hostilities around the Strait of Hormuz have since reignited volatility in energy markets, with Brent rebounding above US$85 per barrel earlier this week.
The persistence of elevated energy prices has slowed the anticipated pace of global disinflation and prompted several central banks to reassess the timing of further easing.
The renewed volatility also reinforces the importance of the scenario analysis this Committee undertook earlier in the year.
For Ghana, as a commodity -exporting yet energy -importing economy, these developments reinforce the need to assess carefully the extent to which external cost pressures may influence the domestic inflation outlook over the policy horizon.
Domestic Conditions: Inflation, Growth, Exchange Rate and Financial Conditions The domestic picture is one of continued resilience alongside a change in the inflation trajectory that requires careful reading.
Headline inflation has risen for three consecutive months, from 3.2 percent in March to 5.3 percent in June, driven largely by transport and haulage prices.
At 5.3 percent it remains below the lower bound of the Bank's target band of 8 percent, plus or minus 2 percentage points, and substantially below the 13.7 percent recorded a year earlier.
The prolonged disinflation phase has ended, and inflation is now returning towards the target band.
Whether that return reflects orderly normalisation, or the beginning of a more persistent change in the outlook, is the central question for this meeting.
Growth has held up well and this trend is expected to continue.
The economy expanded by 6.4 percent in the first quarter, up from 6.2 percent a year earlier, with the GDP deflator easing to 4.1 percent.
Real private sector credit has accelerated to 34.1 percent, against a 4.5 percent contraction a year ago.
This largely reflects the easing in domestic credit conditions associated with the disinflation process, and the Committee will need to assess whether the pace is broad -based and sustainable.
The exchang e rate has remained broadly stable through the first half of July.
The banking system remains sound and well-capitalised, though the still-elevated non-performing loan ratio indicates that credit risk has not yet been fully worked through the system.
Main Issues to dominate the Committee’s Discussions Against that backdrop, four issues will guide our discussions.
First, the inflation outlook.
The Committee must reach a considered view on whether the recent increase in inflation reflects a temporary response to higher imported energy costs or signals a more persistent shift in the inflation outlook.
This assessment must take into account the interaction between external commodity-price pressures on one hand, and prospective adjustments to utility tariffs and transport fares on the other hand, which could add a domestic impulse to what began as an external shock.
The central judgement is not whether inflation has moved, but whether it is beginning to influence the expectations that shape price-setting behaviour.
Second, the effectiveness of the May reforms.
At the 130th meeting, the Committee noted that the interbank rate had shown persistent stickiness at the lower bound of the policy corridor, and the revised Cash Reserve Ratio framework was designed to address this.
Staff will need to establish whether the alignment of short -term market rates with the policy rate has since improved, and whether further refinements to the operational framework are warranted.
Third, the changing composition of domestic liquidity.
The cessation of Bank prefinancing for GoldBod purchases removes one source of liquidity injection at a time when private sector credit is expanding rapidly.
The Committee must assess what this implies for the calibration of the current stance, and whether the balance of sterilisation and structural measures remains appropriate.
Fourth, the external environment.
The Committee must consider what renewed volatility in global oil markets implies for the balance of payments, reserve accumulation, and the exchange rate.
Ghana's external buffers remain a source of resilience, and disciplined reserve management alongside continued exchange -rate flexibility will remain central to how we navigate the period ahead.
Colleagues, the Committee meets at a time when the domestic economy continues to demonstrate resilience, even as the external environment remains uncertain.
Our engagement with the Fund on the transition to the proposed Policy Coordination Instrument continues in parallel and reinforces institutional priorities the Bank maintains as a matter of its own mandate: a credible inflation - targeting framework, effective transmission, and disciplined liquidity management.
Our task this week is not simply to assess the latest data.
It is to determine whether the framework we strengthened in May remains fit for the conditions now before us, and whether the choices we made then continue to serve the medium-term objectives on which our credibility depends.
Remarks on the MPC-EOP Before I conclude, let me also highlight an important initiative that reflects the Bank’s continued commitment to transparency, public engagement, and strengthening the understanding of monetary policy among future generations of economists and policymakers.
As part of the 131st Monetary Policy Committee Meetings, the Bank is pleased to host the inaugural cohort of the Monetary Policy Committee Educational Observership Programme (MPC- EOP), with selected students from the University of Ghana participating in aspects of this week’s proceedings.
Monetary policy is most effective when it is understood, trusted, and supported by the public.
Through this initiative, we seek to demystify the monetary policy process by providing students with practical exposure to the analytical work, technical discussions, and communication processes that underpin the Committee’s decisions.
We hope that this experience will deepen appreciation of the rigour, evidence -based analysis, and accountability that characterise the Bank’s decision - making framework.
The MPC -EOP forms part of our broader efforts to enhance transparency, strengthen policy credibility, and build stronger linkages between academia and policy institutions.
We are delighted to welcome our student observers and faculty representatives to The Bank Square and look forward to their participation in this programme and the 131st Monetary Policy Committee Meetings.
With these few remarks, I declare the 131st Monetary Policy Committee Meeting open.
COMMEMORATING 50 YEARS OF RURAL BANKING AND THE CONVERSION TO COMMUNITY BANKING CLOSING REMARKS BY DR ZAKARI MUMUNI FIRST DEPUTY GOVERNOR, BANK OF GHANA ACCRA | THURSDAY, 16 JULY 2026 The Chief Justice, Honourable Minister of Finance, Governor and Second Deputy Governor, Board of the Bank of Ghana, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen.
President John F. Kennedy once said, “We celebrate the past to awaken the future.”
As we bring today’s programme to a close, I believe those words capture the significance of this occasion.
Today, we have celebrated fifty years of Rural Banking in Ghana.
More importantly, we have renewed our commitment to the future we are called to build.
On behalf of the Bank of Ghana, permit me to express our sincere appreciation for your presence, your partnership, and your valuable contributions—not only to today’s event, but to the Rural Banking sector over the years.
The story of Rural Banking — is one of Ghana’s greatest innovations in financial inclusion and local financial intermediation.
Indeed, Ghana remains home to one of the largest and most vibrant Community Banking sectors on the African continent.
At fifty, we can confidently say that this sector has come of age.
There could hardly be a more appropriate moment — to undertake the transition from Rural Banking to Community Banking.
This is more than a change of name.
It is a renewal of purpose.
A commitment to build on the lessons, the strengths, and the achievements of the past — while preparing our institutions for the opportunities ahead.