For in recent times a lot of banks have rated Ghana a good destination to extend their
operations the competition in the banking industry has heightened. To ensure that banks
maintain adequate working capital the industry regulator i.e. the Bank of Ghana issued a
directive instructing all commercial banks to ensure that by the close of December 2012 their
operating capitals do not fall below GH Ct. 60million. At the close of December 2011 almost
all foreign banks had complied. However some of the local banks are sensing serious limitation
in meeting the order. Therefore the study has the objective to identify the challenges these
banks have to face and thereby the author will recommend avenues for raising funds to meet the
proposed capital requirement. This study is based on six banks that operate in the Accra
business district namely the National Investment Bank (NIB) the Ecobank Ghana Ltd. (ECB) the
Prudential Bank the Ghana Commercial Bank the Merchant Bank Ghana and the Zenith Bank.
Primary data was obtained by soliciting views from bank officials on questions as the
following. Which challenges confront Ghanaian Banks in their cash mobilization efforts? How
could the banks generate more funds from the Ghana Stock Exchange? What efforts were made to
secure funding from strategic investors? How could they reduce operating cost to enhance
working capital? The second data set is based on financial statements and brochures of the
banks. There was a direct approach to officers of these banks whose job description included
liquidity adequacy or assets liability management. The questionnaire technique was adopted as
the ideal research instrument. Moreover the data was analyzed by means of SPSS application
TOPAZ and further the resulting charts and graphs were featured.
