By
Belinda Ayamgha, GNA
Accra, Sept. 21, GNA – The Bank of Ghana is
set to issue a draft “External Auditors Directive” to help improve the
effectiveness of audits in the country and forestall future challenges.
Mr Donatus Freitas, the Chief Manager of the
Banking Supervision Department of the Bank of Ghana, said there was growing
global problems with auditing and warned accountants to address the issue as a
matter of urgency.
Mr Freitas said this in a presentation on
‘Corporate Governance Measures for Ghana’ at a symposium organised by the
University of Professional Studies (UPSA) in collaboration with the Institute
of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators, Ghana, on Friday.
He said the BoG, in light of global happenings
in the audit space, was in the process of issuing the Directive to prevent
similar occurrences in Ghana.
The symposium was under the theme: “Towards
Deliberate Governance in Ghana: Immediate Considerations”.
Among other things, the Director will seek to
ensure that audit firms not only rotate every six years but also rotate
partners periodically.
Outlining other proposed measures to enhance
corporate governance in Ghana, Mr Freitas said the country must also consider
mandating big accounting firms to run joint audits with smaller firms so as to
help build their capacity and reduce the risk of firm concentration.
He raised concerns on the lack of a national
code on corporate governance noting that various regulators such as the BoG,
the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE)
had developed sector-specific corporate governance guidelines, codes or
directives.
He stressed the need for harmonised and
mandatory national corporate governance code for Ghanaian businesses.
Prof. Albert Puni, the Dean of Distance
Learning at UPSA, who spoke on Ghana Corporate Governance Landscape and
Framework, said there was the need to revise the Companies Code to make it more
responsive to modern challenges.
“We need to really look at this law if we want
corporate governance to be what it should be in Ghana,” he said.
He said concentrated ownership in Ghanaian
business was a major challenge to corporate governance as majority shareholders
could flout corporate governance principles.
He, however, acknowledged that concentrated
ownership was working in other parts of the world, an indicator that Ghana was
not doing something right.
Prof. Puni urged key institutions in the
corporate governance space including the SEC, GSE, and the National Insurance
Commission to be more proactive for governance to be what it was supposed to
be.
GNA