First National Bank Ghana has announced that it has temporarily halted the processing of new or pending foreign exchange transactions for 30 days due to ongoing engagements with the Bank of Ghana (BoG).
This was after the Regulator fined them as well as Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited a combined 1000 penalty points each for breaching sections 3.4, 3.5, and 3.9 of the Ghana Interbank Forex Market Conduct rules.
In addition, the Bank of Ghana suspended the respective forex licenses of the two banks from 29th June 2023 to 28th July 2023.
The central bank in a statement cautioned forex market players to adhere strictly to the applicable forex market regulations and guidelines.
“By this notice, we caution forex market players including banks, forex bureaus, forex brokers, and money transfer operators (MTOs) to adhere strictly to the applicable forex market regulations and guidelines,” the statement said.
But reacting to this also in a statement, First National Bank said “To minimize any possible disruptions, we have made temporary arrangements with partner banks to initiate and complete foreign exchange deals for and on behalf of First National Bank Ghana and its clients, should the need arise.
“As a bank, we hold ourselves to the highest operational and regulatory standards in every
aspect of our business. We are committed to reaching an amicable resolution with the Bank of Ghana for the restoration of our Foreign Exchange license.”
Find below what sections 3.4, 3.5, and 3.9 of the Ghana Interbank Forex Market Conduct rules say…
Find below what sections 3.4, 3.5, and 3.9 of the Ghana Interbank Forex Market Conduct rules say…
Section 3.4 “Licensed Foreign Exchange Dealer (LFXD) banks are required to update indicative quotes for buying and selling US dollars at regular intervals on the Reuters and Bloomberg information systems. These quotes should be updated no less frequently than every 30 minutes. Indicative quotes serve as the minimum traded lots for market-makers.
Section 3.5 said “All interbank FX trades must be booked on the Reuters platform and appropriately confirmed within five (5) minutes after the trade is concluded. These trades must also be reported in the daily FX report submitted to the Bank of Ghana.”
Section 3.9 says “The Bank of Ghana shall publish the Ghana Cedi reference rate with respect to the US dollar on the Bank of Ghana website by 16:30 hours GMT daily except on holidays. The reference rate shall be computed using the weighted average exchange rate of all eligible US dollar transactions that are reported to the Bank of Ghana by the cut-off time of 15:30 hours GMT. The Bid and Offer reference rates are calculated by taking a +/- 0.05% bid/ask spread around the weighted average exchange rate.”
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