The Bank of Ghana has urged worried clients of DKM Diamond Micro-finance to exercise some restraint as it thread consciously to ensure the safety of their investments.
Thousands of worried and traumatized clients of DKM Diamond micro finance have expressed fear of losing their investments following a protracted moratorium handed down on the company over three months ago. There have been reports of threat by some angry clients to besiege and vandalize properties of the company after an extension of the 90 day moratorium on the operations of the company.
But in an interview on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show Wednesday with Azongo Albert, Head of Other Financial Institutions of the Bank of Ghana Raymond Amanfu said the decision to suspend the operations of the company was to allow for some checks on the operations of the company in order to ensure the safety of investments of clients.
“The moratorium bothers on exposure to their related parties, it also bothers on liquidity management, high unsustainable interest rates and also on the competence of the management and the board of the company. So what we have to do is to try to address some of these things and we needed to conduct an independent audit of the company. At the end of the audit we had to have discussions with the company. This is a licensed company so we had the discussions to see the way forward to improve the system so that customers investments are not put on risk unduly” he said.
Mr. Amanfu added that the decision to extend the 90 day moratorium was to allow DKM Diamond micro finance some grace period to meet some demands though the company provided some proposals. He intimidated that the Bank of Ghana will only allow the company to resume operations after it has met the directives given by the central bank.
He said “They presented a proposal to us but we looked at the proposal and we think that some of the things must be provided before we can ask them to start operations and subsequently we discussed and had to give them more time in order to put those measures in place so that when they resume customers will be able to access their funds. So we have to wait up to about 11th of next month and if they conclude all that we have asked them to do before that date then we will ask them to operate.”
He however declined to pre-empt what the next line of action will be if the company fails to meet the obligations by September 11.
According to him, the Bank of Ghana appreciates the difficult situation customers of the company have found themselves in but prevailing on all to remain calm and resolute as it works around the clock to ensure the safety of their investments. He however cautioned against the patronage of unreasonably high interest rates by financial institutions because it carries a high risk of non-payment.
By: Azongo Albert | A1radioonline.com | Ghana
