Enhancing Savings Culture in Ghana: The Financial Institutions’ Perspective

Abstract

The study sets out to investigate how savings culture in Ghana can be improved especially following Ghana government’s directive dictated by the IMF towards reducing expenditure in order to improve government’s capacity towards accommodating the repayment schedule arranged with the IMF in respect of a USD 3 billion bailout facility. This led to the “haircutting” of all financial assets including government bonds and treasury bills and other investment products thereby incurring the wrath of the investing public. In conducting the study, random sampling technique helped in selecting 5 out of the 23 commercial banks operating in the Accra business district. Purposive sampling technique was then applied to select both officials and customers of the selected banks for their views on specific objectives of the study. The main research instrument was the questionnaire technique and Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) facilitated the analysis of data. Findings of the study indicated that comfortable interest income and extensive advocacy techniques are usually the main strategies adopted by stakeholders to encourage members of the public to save. Causes of low savings culture in the country include unrealistic interest paid by the banks on savings and investment products as well as high cost of living in the country which makes it very difficult to live on one’s salary, let alone thinking of saving some of it. The study also found out that savings will be enhanced if we deemphasize the use of cash as gift for contest of various types in the country, in favour of investment or savings products such as government bonds, treasury bills or other fixed investment products. Judging from the importance of savings to an economy especially its ability to grant banks more funds for on-lending to various category of businesses for expansion purposes leading to creation of more jobs for the youth, it stands to reason that every effort must be made to step up savings culture in the country. Government also sometimes solicits funds from banks to provide better social amenities and infrastructure for making life much more comfortable for the citizenry. In the light of the above findings, the study recommended that stakeholders especially government and the banks should put in place structures which include sensitizing students right from the pre-tertiary stages on the need to save to strengthen future socio-economic development. Saving is a must and therefore stakeholders should all come on board to encourage this culture in the country.