Financial Institutions must waive loan repayments for 6 months-GUTA tells BoG

April 2, 2020

The Ghana Union Traders Association, GUTA, is asking the Bank of Ghana (BoG) to compel Financial Institutions (FIs) in the country to renounce loan repayments for businesses for six months in compliance with the Government’s directive.

This demand follows the Finance Minister announcement in Parliament on Monday, March 30, 2020, of some fiscal measures, which include granting a six-month moratorium on principal repayments for selected businesses, to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Consequently, GUTA said: “Without necessarily spelling out
the details of the measures, we like to single out the granting of principal
repayments for selected businesses”.

They add that “we believe BoG should have that stronger
oversight to ensure that all financial institutions will implement this
directive for all businesses to bring the needed relief to all distressed
businesses at this time”.

Commended Government

In a Press Statement issued yesterday April 1, 2020, GUTA commended Government for the intervention as announced by the Finance Minister and the effort to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It is very important that at this time of our lives as a
people, every effort should be made to ensure that the negative impact on
especially, our businesses, can be reduced through the human approach by our
revenue authorities, Bank of Ghana, landlords, financial institutions and above
all the government”, a portion of the statement read.

In addition to this, GUTA advised the government to include
its members and all other players in the trading sector any stimulus package is
concerned, explaining that majority of them are in the small and medium
enterprises sector.

“GUTA will continue to advise all her members and the trading private sector to adhere to all the directives of the government and to continue to follow the precautionary measures put out by the health ministry bearing in mind that yes, the economy can be fixed but not our lives, should we lose it”, they added.

Ghana’s recorded cases

Ghana’s cases currently stand at 195, including 5 deaths, 3 recoveries, 18 discharged to go on home management and 80 patients responding well to treatment, thus according to the latest update as at 8am, today, Wednesday, April 1, 2020.