The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has restored the forex licenses of Fidelity Bank and First National Bank.
According to BoG, it had temporarily suspended the two financial institutions for breaching some sections of the Ghana Interbank Forex Market Conduct rules.
Fidelity Bank and First National Bank were fined a combined 1000 penalty points each and barred from forex trading for 30 days from June 29 to July 28, 2023.
But the Bank of Ghana has eased the sanctions allowing the banks to resume forex trading before the expiration of the suspension.
“The two banks have already had their licenses restored two weeks ago. We reduced the punishment by half, so they didn’t go through the full month. They were suspended for only two weeks, so they have been back in the market for some time now”, the governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr Ernest Addison, told the media on Monday, July 24.
The banks were penalized for breaching 3. 4, 3.5 and 3.9 of the Ghana interbank forex conduct rules.
Section 3.4 of Ghana interbank forex market conduct rules deals with indicative quotes, which require the banks to update indicative quotes for buying and selling US dollars at regular intervals on the Reuters and Bloomberg information systems.
Indicative quotes shall be updated at intervals of no more than 30 minutes. This will show the price at which a market-maker is prepared to buy and sell at the minimum traded lots.