(a) Three purposes of accounting information include:

• Decision-making: Provides data for management to make informed choices, such as lending decisions in Ghanaian banks under BoG’s Liquidity Risk Management Guidelines.
• Performance assessment: Enables evaluation of profitability and efficiency, like ratio analysis post-DDEP for recovery monitoring.
• Compliance and reporting: Ensures adherence to regulations, such as IFRS and BoG directives for transparent financial statements in the banking sector.

(b) Four users of accounting information and their needs:

• Management: Internal users needing detailed reports for operational control, e.g., cost analysis to optimize treasury functions in Ecobank Ghana.
• Investors/Shareholders: Require profitability and risk data to assess returns, such as dividend policy amid recapitalization under BoG Notice BG/GOV/SEC/2023/05.
• Creditors/Lenders: Focus on liquidity and solvency ratios to evaluate repayment capacity, critical in Ghana post-2017 cleanup for assessing bank stability.
• Regulators (e.g., BoG): Need accurate disclosures for oversight, ensuring compliance with Corporate Governance Directive 2018 to prevent collapses like Capital Bank.

(c)

• Trial Balance: A statement listing all ledger account balances at a specific date, with total debits equaling total credits, to verify arithmetic accuracy and detect errors (though not all, like compensating errors).
• Bank Reconciliation Statement: A document explaining differences between the cash book balance and bank statement balance, incorporating timing differences, errors, or unrecorded items, to ensure accurate cash reporting in line with operational risk standards.