Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has said his assurance to ensure every Ghanaian owns a bank account was misunderstood.
According to him, critics who have said that feat has not been achieved did not understand what he said in 2017.
“Many people did not and still do not quite understand what I meant when I said that every eligible Ghanaian will be able to get a bank account when we implement mobile money interoperability during our tenure. They were thinking of the Traditional bank accounts, but we have moved on. We are in a digital world now,” he said at an event to mark International Youth Day in Accra.
It will be recalled that the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia speaking at the official opening of the Innovation Week organised by the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in Accra, in December 2017 indicated government’s resolve to ensure every Ghanaian gets a bank account by 2018.
This he said at the time was to ensure financial inclusion in the country.
Recently, there have been questions over whether government has achieved that goal.
But Dr. Bawumia has forcefully argued that, that has been achieved.
He indicated that the introduction of the mobile interoperability has resulted in a 200 million transactions on mobile money as of the end of December 2019 as against five hundred and ninety nine thousand for bank transactions.
“So the banks transactions was only 3% of the mobile money transactions. So banking has been turned on its head. We have moved from branch banking to branchless banking,” he said.
He stressed that at least 15 million Ghanaians are currently holding bank accounts.
