A professor of Financial Economics at the University of Ghana Business School says there is now a credible path to restoring Unibank's license.
This follows government's move to consider non-conviction asset recovery and the Attorney-General's new 60% recovery threshold in the banking sector prosecutions.
Laud Mensah, speaking on JoyNews' PM Express, said he supports the idea of bringing Unibank back into operation, especially after examining the events from 2017 to date. "Yes, I foresee that," he said when asked whether a restoration of Unibank's license is now plausible. "Because if you take in our banking space, we are looking out for a situation where it will be dominated by local ownership." He explained that although the collapsed bank faced serious liquidity and solvency problems, the funds that contributed to its downfall were not lost to the country. "The reason why I'm comfortable with the non-conviction-based asset recovery is that, let's look at the happenings holistically.
Whatever money that was taken out as a result of creating the liquidity and solvency problems-those monies were invested in the country." He argued the challenge was not outright fraud or capital flight but poor allocation of funds within the local economy, which ultimately hurt the bank's immediate financial health. "The only problem is that it wasn't invested appropriately to meet the liquidity needs of the bank.
