Mr Kojo Addae-Mensah, the Group Chief Executive Officer of Databank, called on all stakeholders in the financial sector to adopt strategies of making savings and investment a part of the Ghanaian culture.
He advised individual banks to devise strategies to help majority of Ghanaians to develop a healthy investment culture, which could facilitate the development of the country.
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Mr Addae-Mensah said, a strong strategy needs to be adopted to rectify the “poor saving and virtually non-existence investment culture” among Ghanaians.
He said: “I rarely move away from an opportunity to have a conversation that would reach out to Ghanaians in general trying to educate them about the importance of investing”.
He said: “our advocacy has to be very strong so as to get through to the Ghanaians who are currently un-banked. We the investment bankers really need to push the advocacy”.
Mr Addae-Mensah also called on the Central Bank to support the advocacy drive.
He said the attempted tax on treasury bills by the previous government was something the government should not try to do because it could discourage investment entirely.
Mr Addae-Mensah explained that most Ghanaians do not invest because of the fear of government policies.
“They tell us that ‘I am not going to invest because I don’t know what policies the government will implement to erode my money’”. Mr Addae-Mensah said some thought it was better to keep their funds in their homes.
Ghanaians do not save because many people think they do not earn enough coupled with unemployment and the low standard of living among others, he added.
“Once you can tithe, you can also invest,” Mr Addae-Mensah said, adding that currently an estimated 70 per cent of the Ghanaian population was unbanked which made it difficult to talk about increasing investments.
He however called on all stakeholders to come together to tap into the un-banked population to facilitate the development of Ghana.
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