Once upon a time in the Republic of Uncommon Sense, you could walk into a bank with ten dollars and walk out with nine — minus a smile and maybe a cup of coffee. Today, you walk in with a hundred, and by the time the system has finished “processing” your patriotism, you’ll be lucky if seventy crawls out alive.
The rest? It disappears somewhere between Accra and Zurich — that mysterious route where money travels first class and returns on crutches. They say SWIFT took it — the global cousin of the Ghanaian middleman who collects “processing fee” for simply pointing at the office you were already entering.
Banks in Ghana no longer serve customers; they harvest them. The moment your dollars hit the account, they begin a fast—thirty percent for SWIFT, seven percent for withdrawal, and an unidentifiable percentage for “administrative purposes,” which, translated, means “because we can.”
Once upon a time, this commission was two percent. Then it grew to three, then five, and today it has reached seven — proof that interest rates are not the only things in Ghana that inflate; even greed compounds monthly.
When you ask why, the banker, wearing a smile borrowed from a funeral brochure, will tell you, “It’s a new policy to sanitize the forex market.” Of course. Because in Ghana, we clean corruption by dirtying the poor. The official logic goes something like this: “If withdrawing foreign currency becomes painful, people will stop doing it.” That’s like saying, “If walking is expensive, we’ll all start flying.”
Instead, people will simply move their dollars into black-market channels faster than you can say BoG directive. Already, freelancers, importers, and small businesses are whispering new proverbs: “The man who keeps his dollars in the bank is like a farmer storing maize with goats.”
What the authorities call “sanitizing” the market is starting to smell more like fumigation with citizens inside. Every new charge arrives wrapped in a press release about “economic stability,” as though robbing people politely makes it okay.
Then there is SWIFT — that invisible middleman who eats before the food reaches the table. When $100 is sent to Ghana, $30 vanishes mid-flight, allegedly as “correspondent bank fees.” If only SWIFT could also correspond when it’s time to explain the robbery.
Imagine this: a Ghanaian freelancer writes articles for a London client, receives payment, and watches $30 evaporate before the money even lands. Then the local bank shaves off another 7 percent for “service.” It’s the first business model in history where both delivery and receipt are taxed by appetite.
These days, Ghana’s banks are beginning to resemble churches with special envelopes for everything. Deposit fee, withdrawal fee, SMS fee, account maintenance fee, and now the sacred “commission on your own sweat.” You need divine intervention to understand the breakdown.
And when you complain, they say, “It’s policy.” Ah yes, that magical word—policy—the national scapegoat that absolves all sins. Policy made the fees, policy raised them, and policy will one day bury the entire banking sector in black-market graves.
The elders say, “When you milk a cow without feeding it, expect blood instead of milk.” The more the system squeezes ordinary customers, the more people will bypass it entirely. Already, the parallel market is smiling, whispering, “Bring your dollars home; we’ll treat them better.” It’s a strange kind of patriotism when the official bank punishes you for being legal while the black market rewards you for being practical.
Soon, customers will keep dollars under pillows again, and banks will hold conferences asking why “financial inclusion” has collapsed. The answer will be simple: because inclusion has become intrusion.
Perhaps what we need is truth in advertising. Banks should update their slogans to match their mission:
• “Your Money, Our Motivation.”
• “Where Every Deposit Is a Donation.”
• “We Don’t Charge; We Collect Tithes.”
At this rate, opening a foreign account in Ghana should come with a health warning: May cause hypertension and financial ulcer.
If the goal is to stabilize the forex market, this is not stabilization—it’s immobilization. A nation cannot tax its way to trust. You cannot beat the black market by imitating it with receipts.
So, dear Bank of Ghana, if you truly wish to sanitize the market, start by washing your hands off our pockets. Because right now, banking in Ghana feels less like a service and more like a sermon from Pastor SWIFT of the Church of Seven Percent — where the only miracle is watching your balance resurrect in the black market.
$100 in, $70 out — and they say the economy is “sanitized.”
Let’s talk: are Ghana’s banks saving us, or just saving themselves?
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