The Minority in Parliament has defended its decision to drag the management of the Agricultural Development Bank (Adb) to court.
The NPP threatened to sue the bank for trying to sell about 75% of shares on the stock market without seeking parliamentary approval.
The company has been given the approval to offer its shares on the stock market to enable the bank expand its operations.
The bank is expected to offload a little over 100 million shares to the public by the end of April with the aim of generating about Ghc300 million.
But speaking on Eyewitness News, a member of the Minority in Parliament, Alex Afenyo Markin insisted that the matter should be brought to Parliament to enable them scrutinize the deal.
“We are saying that as the people’s representatives, Adb should bring to Parliament, all their investments plans. The intention to go to the stock, whatever that they want to do with whichever money that they receive, we should have the opportunity as the people’s representatives, working with government, to scrutinize it so that there will be value for money,” he said.
Afenyo Markin argued that it is important for the matter to be tabled before Parliament since it will enable them “look at this transaction, how the funds are going to be used after the shares have been floated, and all that, scrutinize same and examine whether or not it will be in the interest of the people for the business entity which is owned by them to be trading on the stock exchange.”
He explained that it is also “for the purposes of constitutional, accountability and transparency, it cannot be said that cabinet approval alone is sufficient in a matter like this.”
In a related development, workers of the Agricultural development bank (Adb) are calling for the immediate dissolution of the board of directors of the bank and the dismissal of the Managing Director, Stephen Kpordzih, to save the financial institution from imminent collapse.
The staff are also questioning why the bank’s head office was sold at $10 million and another premises rented at GH1 million per month.
“I believe that if all these things had come to Parliament for parliamentary scrutiny perhaps we could have looked at some of these things and properly put across our views,” Afenyo Markin added.
