Bank of Ghana gets $350,000 Swiss gov’t support to develop web-based collateral registry

The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has received a $350,000 support from the Swiss government to develop a web-based collateral registry to facilitate credit access by small and medium scale businesses in the country.

An agreement to that effect was signed between the BoG and the government of Switzerland at a short ceremony at the Swiss Embassy in Accra today, April 8, 2011.

The pact, which forms part of a $1.25 million assistance from the Swiss government to BoG using the International Finance Corporation (IFC) as a facilitator, is to help the BoG to develop a “web-based collateral registry that will facilitate access to credit for SMEs in Ghana.”

“Through the support the Bank of Ghana will re-design the current registry system to a modern web-based Secure Transactions Registry System and also transfer existing data in the collateral registry system to the new one”, Mr Dode Seidu, Communications Officer at the Swiss Embassy told ghanabusinessnews.com after the signing ceremony.

The collateral registry was established after the Borrowers and Lenders Act 773 was passed in 2008.

The register will keep information about the creditor’s collateral which they have provided as security for loans and this will be accessible to lenders, officials at the Embassy said.

A statement from BoG said that the support will complement the efforts made by the Bank to ensure easy access to credit in the economy especially by SMEs.

Even though the last credit conditions survey conducted by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) in January 2011 shows that access to credit has improved, borrowers are still facing challenges in accessing loans from the banks.

By Ekow Quandzie