Finance Minister-designate, Ken Ofori-Atta has disclosed that the erstwhile John Dramani Mahama led National Democratic Congress (NDC) government had the support of Databank, a financial institution he co-founded in making financial transactions.
He made this known in response to a question during his vetting whether Databank had ever been involved in any government transaction since he assumed office as Finance Minister.
According to him the bank helped government in securing $25 million to help privatise some 8 companies in the 1990s after it was launched.
“In the 1990s when government had talked about privatising a number of maybe 6 or 8 companies Unilever, PZ enterprise shares, it had been an impossible task. And when we launched our company, I think in 1993/94 we were able to put together $25 million to execute that transaction, which was 80% of the stock market at that time”.
“And when we started the Eurobond issuance in 2007, we were part of that transaction in Kufour’s era. But even before that, also, there was a crisis of liquidity in Ashanti in which former President Rawlings and Former President Mills invited Databank and Calbank to bring our expertise to bear and to resolve that,” he said.
“So we have constantly participated, independent of which government there was to date”.
Source: GhanaFeed.com