Ghana to network rural banks

Ghana is working on plans to connect all rural and community banks in the country to a single network by 2007. About 40 banks are expected to be computerised by 2006 while the rest would be plugged into the network the following year.

This would allow for faster and more efficient transactions among banks to the ultimate benefit of banks’ customers, Ghana’s Managing Director of the ARB Apex Bank  Mr E. K. Kwapong announced at the last annual general meeting of the Fiaseman Rural Bank Limited at Bogoso in the Western Region. It would be the 16^th of such yearly AGMs by the bank at Bogoso.

While many banks in commercial city centres such as Accra, Kumasi and port city Tema have been able to integrate IT into their banking process, not much of computing system has gone into banks serving rural communities.

But Kwapong said banks whether in towns or rural areas cannot afford to remain at the fringe. They owe their customers an obligation to shorten time spent on transacting business within the banking halls. Beside, said he, the emergence of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and computers have made banking services to be more customer-friendly and convenient.

In the last two years that the ARB Apex Bank opened shop, it has been able to provide more value added services to several rural and community banks by way of clearing of cheques on behalf of the rural and community banks and the supply of cash for their operations as well as facilitating the purchase of Akuafo Cheques system.

According to him, the bank had also embarked on several training programmes to enable staff and even directors of those banks cope with the emerging challenges in the banking sector. The face of modern banking has changed said Kwapong. Only highly skilled workers, trained on trends within the industry can meet customers’ increasingly changing and sophisticated needs.

He said the trainings have helped banks that have participated to sharpen the skills of  their workers for improved banking service delivery to those communities where they are in operation.  The ARB Apex Bank was established to enhance the performance of banks tagetted at serving rural or low-capital communities.   It has since served as a conduit for the channeling of on-lending micro finance credits from government and donor communities to the rural and community banks to in Kwapong’s words: “ensure proper utilisation of funds and also promote sustainability of these programmes,” adding that the Apex Link Domestic Funds Transfer Product, introduced about a year ago, had helped to linked up all the rural and community banks in the country in the domestic funds transfer business. He said the fund has helped to fill a huge vacuum in the national payments system.

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