Rotich refers MPs to Uhuru on CBK board nominees list
What you need to know:
- Mr Lang'at also sought answers as to why names of nominees to the Privatisation Commission had not been submitted to Parliament despite the completion of the recruitment.
- "The CBK appears to be too weak to monitor and supervise suspicious activities in the financial services sector. It appears that commercial banks are too sophisticated in terms of IT than CBK when the reverse should have been the case," Benjamin Langat, who chairs the committee, said.
- MPs accused the CBK of failing to oversight financial institutions leading to the liquidation of Dubai Bank and the collapse of Imperial and Chase Bank.
Treasury secretary Henry Rotich has asked MPs to demand the list of nominees for the Central Bank of Kenya board from President Uhuru Kenyatta who is the appointing authority.
Mr Rotich said he has no power to submit the list of the nominees to Parliament after MPs amended the CBK Act to give the power of nominating directors to the banking sector regulator to the President.
"The CBK board membership will be constituted shortly. Following changes to the CBK Act, members to the board will be nominated by the President and forwarded to Parliament for vetting and approval," Mr Rotich told the Finance, Planning and Trade committee that is investigating the collapse of three banks over a period of less than a year.
"I wish I had the power. I want you to ask the appointing authority but I know that the names will be in Parliament soon," he said.
He explained that the process of trying to identify suitable persons for the CBK board membership took long.
"That nomination is done by the President. We have discussed this as Treasury and the final process of identifying the candidates has been completed and names will come to the House shortly," he said.
Mr Rotich was responding to questions asked by North Imenti MP Rahim Dawood who sought to know why it had taken more than nine months to appoint members of the CBK board after the House approved the appointment of Mohammed Nyaoga and Sheila Mbijjiwe as chair and vice chair of the CBK board of directors.
Last month, Mr Rotich told the Business Daily that the Treasury had finalized and forwarded to the President list of individuals to be appointed to the board.
MPs accused the CBK of failing to oversight financial institutions leading to the liquidation of Dubai Bank and the collapse of Imperial and Chase Bank.
Chase bank has since been reopened but is under a 12 month receivership. Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation appointed Kenya Commercial Bank as receiver managers and allowed depositors to access up to Sh1 million.
Too sophisticated
"The CBK appears to be too weak to monitor and supervise suspicious activities in the financial services sector. It appears that commercial banks are too sophisticated in terms of IT than CBK when the reverse should have been the case," Benjamin Langat, who chairs the committee, said.
Mr Lang'at also sought answers as to why names of nominees to the Privatisation Commission had not been submitted to Parliament despite the completion of the recruitment.
"We have submitted the names to the clerk. We have made appointments and brought names to the House for vetting," Mr Rotich said.
Mr Rotich conceded that the regulator has had a number of challenges in monitoring financial institutions but assured the MPs that measures have been taken to strengthen areas of weaknesses.
He said the CBK capacity is being enhanced including the process of vetting any director picked to be on board of any financial institution to comply with "the fit and proper standards."
"Going forward, the Treasury will require that all boards of banks and financial institutions take recommendations of CBK and other audits fully. Boards should be fully involved. This responsibility had been left to management alone," he said.
He said CBK is enhancing oversight of banks' IT systems, an area with serious challenges.
"We are recruiting skilled IT staff to strengthen CBK technical capacity in addition to strengthening bank supervision. We are also enhancing governance practices in addition to enhancing the quantum of penalties in regulatory violations. We will prosecute cases of fraud and malfeasance and engage banks and other regulators to enhance monitoring of financial institutions," Mr Rotich said.
He said the banking regulator had noticed that some banks been having weak lending practices undertaken with institutions that undermine quality of assets.
"Some challenges that faced the collapsed lenders include liquidity management, governance issues and high commercial lending interest rates regimes leading to default in repayment of loans," Mr Rotich said.
