Ghana needs hardline measures to address growing depreciation of cedi – Bamba

Mr. Kwadwo Bamba, a businessman and youth activist of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), has advocated stringent measures by the government to address the growing depreciation of the cedi.

“It is an undeniable fact that an overwhelming number of major currencies have depreciated against the dollar, including the Ghana cedi.

“However, if we are able to foster home-grown policies such as limiting the importation of foreign products drastically, then things will improve,” Mr. Bamba told the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Kumasi.

According to him, the impunity with which foreign currencies, especially the dollar, were sold on the black market as well as transacting business in the country in the hard currency instead of the local currency also ought to be dealt with.

“The dollar is strengthening primarily because there is strong demand for it,” the youth activist observed.

In his view, investor confidence could only be boosted in a stabilised economy, therefore, all the prevailing factors that tended to hike the inflation rate and weakening of the local currency must be critically looked at.

The Financial Times, citing data from the Institute of International Finance, recently reported that, foreign investors had pulled funds out of emerging markets for five straight months in the longest streak of withdrawals on record.

Mr. Bamba indicated that such shocks only went to exacerbate the economic setbacks confronting the nation, following the COVID-19 pandemic and Ukraine-Russia war, which had brought untold hardships to most developing countries.

He advised that stakeholders should be supportive of the government as it worked to improve the country’s fiscal position.

“We are all in the boat together, and as such, we should be prepared to mobilise resources domestically without much reliance on external aid,” he noted.

Source: GNA