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Mr Duke Osam-Duodu, Deputy Managing Director of the ARB APEX Bank, has called on Rural and Community Banks (RCBs) to adopt effective strategies to enable them to compete favourably in the banking industry. He said strategies such as looking for more avenues to invest their excess funds and mergers with other banks could be adopted. Mr Osam-Duodu said the emerging competition in the banking sector showed that no individual rural bank could operate alone to generate capital to provide the needed financial services to its customers. Mr Osam-Duodu made the call at the 26th Annual General Meeting of the Afram Rural Bank at Tease in the Kwahu North District. He said it would be better for RCBs to merge and lose their identity but still be in business than to operate on an uneconomic scale and eventually collapse to deprive the communities of essential financial services. Mr Osam-Duodu urged the RCBs to adopt effective internal control systems to ensure efficiency of their operations, reliability of their financial reporting and compliance with applicable laws and regulations. He said the Millennium Challenge Account Project had reached an advanced stage of implementation and urged rural banks in the beneficiary areas to cooperate with the consultants involved in the project to facilitate its smooth operation. Mr Emmanuel Augustine Siaw, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank, said the Bank was able to mobilize GH� 1.6 million deposits last year as against GH� 1.1 million in 2007. That represented an increase of 40 per cent while total investment stood at GH� 352,020 in 2008 as against GH� 252,020 in 2007. He said the Bank was able to grant loans and overdrafts totaling GH� 1.372 million to its customers last year as against GH� 875,707 in 2007, an increase of 56.78 per cent. Mr Siaw said the share capital of the Bank rose from GH� 13,832 in 2007 to GH� 93,832 in 2008 and made a net profit of GH� 16,832 in 2008 as against GH� 7,170 in 2007, an increase of 74.20 per cent due to good micro-economic environment. Mr Evans Charles Apreku, District Chief Executive, said in an address read for him that the bank had a major role in projects like the Millennium Challenge Account, the Afram Plains Development Agriculture Project and the European Union Feeder Road improvement Project, which were to enhance agriculture development. He said those projects would inject a lot of capital to finance a number of development projects in the district and urged the Bank to take advantage to manage some of the funds to maximize profit.