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Some Air Force helicopters
The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has reached an agreement with the Ghana Air Force to use its fleet, which comprises helicopters and planes, to transport money by air for banks and other financial institutions across the country.
BoG Governor Dr. Ernest Addison said in Accra last Monday that the deal was part of the central bank’s efforts to reduce the incidence of armed robberies in vehicles carrying money for financial institutions across the country.
He said that discussions are also taking place for the Gender Bank to make its fleet of bullion vans available to financial institutions for the purpose of circulating cash.
The governor said the central bank bullion trucks would replace the makeshift bullion trucks that banks and financial institutions used to move cash around the country.
Event
The governor was responding to questions from the media about how the central bank intended to address the recurring attacks on bullion vans by armed robbers across the country.
The interview was on the sidelines of the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) press conference to announce a decision on its benchmark rate, the policy rate.
The bank kept the rate at 14.5 percent after the committee concluded that “risks to the immediate outlook for inflation and growth are broadly balanced.”
Setbacks
Known as ‘movements in kind’ in the financial sector, the distribution of funds across the country has suffered several setbacks in recent times.
Between December last year and this September, banks have suffered three attacks on bullion vans carrying money, resulting in the death of a police officer and the loss of money.
In an incident in May this year, armed robbers allegedly took more than GH ¢ 600,000, an AK 47 rifle and 19 rounds of ammunition after attacking an ingot in Mmaampehia, near Techiman in the eastern Bono region.
Dr Addison said the attacks did not bode well for the integrity and stability of the financial sector, and consequently the BoG had put in place a strategy to help make the process more secure.
He said the bank had noticed that all banks and other financial institutions were using “these trucks that have been turned into bullion trucks.”
“It is an issue that the BoG has taken seriously. We have a pretty good fleet of bullion vans and I ask you to see how we can collaborate with the banks, so that we can have a safer way to transport money across the country, ”said the governor.
Dr. Addison added that he had also met with the Air Chief of Staff, Air Vice-Marshal Frank Hanson, who agreed in principle to help the bank with raising currency across the country, using some of the aircraft. that had the Air Force.
“Therefore, a lot of work is being done to improve the security of carrying cash around the country,” he added.
Praise
When contacted by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Bankers Association (GAB), John Awuah, he said the BoG’s intervention was timely and commendable.
He said that if the central bank succeeds in getting banks to air cash and transport something in their bullion vans, “it will be a dream come true for us banks.”
“We hope it can start as soon as possible,” he added yesterday in a separate interview.
Both deals would not increase the cost of banking, he said, noting that it would only affect efficiency.
“As for the cost of cash movements, we are already incurring it. What will happen now is that the BoG vans and helicopters will move larger amounts of funds across the regions or from the branch to the central office, so that our own systems can handle the smallest transactions, ”Awuah said.
He said banks had delegated the duty of movement of species to cash-in-transit service providers, most of whom had not standardized the activity, and expressed the hope that ongoing discussions with service providers would lead to the development of modalities on how to make the movement of species safer and more comforting.
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