The Development Bank Ghana (DBG) has announced a net profit of GH¢80.144 million in the 2023 fiscal year. The figure represents a growth of 2.74 per cent from the previous year’s net profit of a little over GH¢77.9 million.

A statement issued by the bank said DBG had consistently reported net profits annually since its inception in 2021, ending that particular year with a net surplus of more than GH¢53.6 million.

The statement added that the bank expects to end 2024 with a net profit despite the challenging operating environment.

Over the last two years, the statement said, the DBG had nearly doubled its total assets, reaching GH¢4 billion in 2024, with a projection of GH¢5.7 billion by 2025.

The DBG was initially capitalised in 2021 by the Government of Ghana with an amount of GH¢1.135 billion, equivalent then to $200 million.

The capital, the bank’s documents suggest, was subsequently increased by GH¢268.60 million, equivalent to $38.3 million at that time, from the African Development Bank (AfDB) through the Government of Ghana.

Performance

Highlighting some milestones since its inception, the DBG statement said the bank had disbursed a total of GH¢1.5 billion to small and medium-scale enterprises across 13 regions, facilitating recovery and growth in key sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing and hospitality, and supporting thousands of jobs.

In partnership with CalBank and Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG), the DBG provided a syndicated loan of GH¢245.3 million in 2022 to support the hospitality sector’s recovery from the impact of COVID-19, contributing to facility expansion, job retention and enhanced service quality, the statement added.

It said key impact areas included support for women-led businesses totalling GH¢400 million portfolios, food security projected to be around GH¢400 million by 2025, climate finance of around GH¢41 million, and digital finance of about GH¢20 million.

Providing updates on its operations, the DBG said funds from the World Bank and the EIB were credit lines that were only drawn upon for on-lending in tranches.

That, it said, was based on pipelines presented to the bank by its participating financial institutions, and consequently approved by DBG.

“Such funds are not available for DBG to use on itself, and, therefore, can never be used for administrative or capital expenditures,” the bank said in seeming reference to some recent claims in the local media about its financial circumstances.

“The World Bank, the EIB and other providers of funds to DBG regularly monitor the use of such funds and issue reports on the results of such monitoring,” the statement said.

It said despite the assertions that DBG spent huge funds to upgrade furniture and drapery on its executive floor, the bank took an empty concrete space on the fifth floor in the same building which housed it currently to create Development Bank Ghana Guarantee (DBGG) and an extra office space for the staff.

The statement said with the aid of independent market practitioners, it was able to prudently provide furniture for about 30 per cent of its staff who had been squatting in the boardroom for several months.

Mandate

The statement said due to the diversity of the bank’s product offering, it was crucial to put in place a proper information technology (IT) architecture to support efficient delivery of its mandate.

As a result, the bank said, it followed its rigorous procurement processes to procure and implement world-class technology solutions necessary to deliver its mandate.

It added that IT architectures such as datacentre, Enterprise Resource Planning, Middleware and Security Operations Centre, among others, were installed not just for its banking system, but also for DBG and its envisaged subsidiaries coming online.

“The requirements were, therefore, more extensive technically, and the process for procurement was in line with the bank’s rigorous procurement policy,” the statement said.