The Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has disclosed that the €170 million EIB loan secured by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the National Development Bank Ghana will be paid by the country within 20 years.
He added that this loan comes with a 5-year moratorium and 0.5 percent interest.
He made this known in an interview with Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show aired on e.TV Ghana and Happy 98.9FM.
“The government of Ghana has invested 200 million dollars into the DBG which is not a loan, the World Bank gave us 250 million dollars and recently the President arranged 170 million euro- which is a 20-year loan with an initial 5-year moratorium. That is within these five years, we won’t pay anything with an interest rate of about 0.5 percent that will be invested in the DBG which will then be given to the banks to give out loans.
When people who receive these loans in their banks pay as quickly as possible, then the banks can pay back the Development Bank for the loan to be paid even before the 20-year period. So, it is a mix of funding made of equity and debt”, he shared.
The Ministry of Finance and the European Investment Bank have signed an agreement for the provision of a one hundred- and seventy-million-euro (€170 million) facility for the establishment of a new national bank, the Development Bank Ghana (DBG).
This event took place on Wednesday, 19th May 2021, when the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, held a meeting with the President of the European Investment Bank, Dr. Werner Hoyer, as part of his official visit to Belgium.
The €170 million facility, according Dr. Hoyer, is the largest facility provided by the European Investment Bank for the establishment of a development bank in Africa or for any other project, for that matter, on the continent.
By: Alberta Dorcas N D Armah
