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President of policy think tank, IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, says the supposed closed-door probe of the banking crisis by Parliament’s Finance Committee is insulting.

“I think Parliament’s intervention is useful but not in the manner in which they want to do it because that is quite frankly an insulting way of getting to the bottom of the matter,” he said.

Franklin Cudjoe made the remark on Citi FM/Citi TV’s news analysis programme, The Big Issue on Saturday when the banking crisis was being discussed.

Seven banks have collapsed in Ghana within the last year with the central bank giving varied reasons for such crisis.

According to the Bank of Ghana whereas some of the banks had liquidity challenges, others obtained their banking licenses through dubious means.

Some of the collapse banks allegedly squandered millions of cedis given them by the BoG to help them resuscitate.

Some Ghanaians have however called sanctions for persons behind the collapse of the banks because government has issued about GHc8 billion in bonds to defray the debt left behind at the expense of the taxpayer.

Parliament has subsequently served notice of holding a three-day closed-door session to quiz the central bank on the banking crisis.

A Ranking Member on Parliament’s Finance Committee, Cassiel Ato Forson said the session will not be open to the public due to the sensitivity of the matter.

“We’ve come to the conclusion that considering what we call the sensitivity of the matter, parliament committee of Finance will meet in-camera to look at this matter. It is important for the people appearing before the committee to be at ease and to give us the needed answers,” Mr. Ato Forson said.

But Franklin Cudjoe insists that the session should be made public because “the matter is already in the public domain, we already know them.”

“Unless they have some extra curricula, extra spiritual, extra powers to determine what has actually happened they should not go and have something in camera and say that because there’s a fear that the banking crisis will lead to further loss of confidence in the banking sector,” he said on The Big Issue.