The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has fined Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited and First National Bank Ghana Limited a combined 1,000 penalty points for breaching sections 3.4, 3.5, and 3.9 of the Ghana Interbank Forex Market Conduct rules.
This was disclosed in a statement signed by the Secretary of BoG, Sandra Thompson, and released in Accra yesterday.
“Bank of Ghana has fined Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited and First National Bank Ghana Limited a combined 1,000 penalty points each for breaching sections 3.4, 3.5, and 3.9 of the Ghana Interbank Forex Market Conduct rules,” she indicated.
In addition, the Bank has suspended the respective forex licences of the above-mentioned banks from 29th June 2023 to 28th July 2023.
By this notice, BoG has cautioned 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.
According to section 3.4 of the Ghana Interbank Forex Market Conduct, “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 continued: “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, 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.”
