If you’ve taken a loan and have no intention of paying it back, the Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr. Johnson Asiamah, has a message for you: your name is on its way to be published in newspapers since banks have been directed to disclose defaulters in their audited financial statements.
This is part of a number of directives the banks are going to work with as part of a drastic move to sanitize Ghana’s financial sector, especially the age-old Non-Performing Loans (NPLs).
The BoG Governor announced these sweeping directives that will soon be enforced in the banking sector at a post-MPC meeting with the Ghana Bankers Association (GAB).
As part of the new directives, the banks will be required to publicly disclose the names of willful defaulters, individuals or companies who can pay but simply refuse to.
These names will appear in the audited financial statements of banks, alongside detailed breakdowns of which sectors are contributing most to the pile of bad loans.
“As part of this directive, banks will also be required to disclose blacklisted willful defaulters in their audited financial statements, along with sectoral breakdowns of NPL exposures,” Dr. Johnson Asiamah announced.
He continued, “This added layer of transparency will sharpen both regulatory and investor focus on systemic credit risks. These actions are part of our broader agenda to restore asset quality, promote sound lending practices, and safeguard the resilience of Ghana’s financial system.”
It is expected that this “name and shame” approach will reduce Ghana’s stubbornly high Non-Performing Loans (NPLs), which have been a thorn in the banking sector for years.
Moreover, under the new rules, banks must clean their books by writing off loans that are clearly unrecoverable, restructure only when repayments are consistent, and actively recover collateral from overdue borrowers.
For the average Ghanaian, the menace of rising NPLs is not far from home. Loans are not just numbers on a balance sheet. This affects trust, livelihoods, the cost of loans, and in many cases, the barrier between progress and poverty.
The abuse of the system by wilful defaulters further leads to lending becoming tighter, interest rates climb, and genuine borrowers get locked out.
So from now on, your financial behavior won’t just cost you credit, it could cost you your reputation.
