General Secretary of the Ghana Agricultural Workers Union, Mr Edward Kareweh, has cast doubt on the ability of the banks to recover their debts owed by the Produce Buying Company (PBC) by merely disposing of the assets of the company.

Mr Kareweh stated that the assets of PBC are not enough to pay for the over $300 million debts owed by the PBC to the banks.

PBC since last year, has been struggling to secure funds for the purchase of cocoa beans due to its current debt. The debts made it difficult to carry out any financial transaction through commercial banks.

Mr Kareweh cited mismanagement and corruption as the causes of the challenges of the company and further criticized the government for allowing the company to be mismanaged, leading to its collapse.

“We are aware that many state institutions are not performing, they are not making profits and PBC is one of them where the state has folded its hands and there is so much corruption, there is mismanagement to the extent that labour force has to reduce and now that we have legal action taken and judgment given for the assets of the company to be disposed of to meet loan obligations by statement institutions. For instance, GCB, is a state institution, ADB is a state institution, Cal Bank is Ghanaian-owned, UMB is also a Ghanaian owned and the others as well.

“The real effect of what is happening at PBC goes beyond PBC to affect all these banks. I am telling you that even though they have got the judgment to dispose of the properties of PBC to pay for their loans, at the close of the day it is clear that the over 300 million dollars that PBC owes cannot be paid, the assets of PBC will not be able to meet that cost. Those banks will eventually run into losses, they will not be able to recover all the loans of PBC and they will be contained to function as desired by all of us.”