Assessing Financial Openness and Access to Credit Facilities: The Case of Banks in Ho, Ghana

The main purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between financial openness and easy access to credit facilities from banks. Besides secondary data, questionnaires are used to collect primary data from the twelve banks in Ho, Ghana. Using descriptive method, the study finds that higher financial openness builds higher trust for easier access to credit facilities. Clients with reliable track records and obey full disclosure principles would have more opportunities to access credit facilities than those who do not have any evidence of track records. The study concludes that financial openness is not an end itself, but a means to an end; thus, it is a process of revealing more trade/finance secrets so as to accumulate more trust to enhance credit accessibility. However, financial openness has a reciprocal cost/benefit-decision effect on both supply and demand sides. Policy makers will find this study useful for effective decision making.