The Member of Parliament for Cape Coast South, Kweku George Ricketts-Hagan, has indicated that Ghana’s economy is not yet out of the woods as some proponents of the government have stated.
According to him, the country’s currency, the Ghana cedi, is now gaining value over Ghana’s major trading currencies including the US dollar because there is a reduced demand for foreign currency.
He added that the supply of dollars, on the other hand, is increasing because a lot of Ghanaians are coming back home from abroad and others are sending remittances to their families.
“Don’t be fooled by the appreciation of the cedi you are seeing. It is not backed by anything. (It is happening) for the simple reason that we have a homecoming and there are a lot of inflows coming in," he said.
“Obviously, getting a staff-level agreement has reduced the speculation. So, people who were holding on to the dollar knowing that Ghana's economy is not going to get any better have now realised that the government will abandon its wasteful expenditure because of the IMF programme," he added.
The MP, who was speaking to journalists on the side-line of the National Democratic Congress’ delegates congress, on December 17, 2022, however, said that the depreciation of the Ghana cedi will start again after the festive period.
“The same thing happened in 2019 when the Ghana cedi was the best-performing currency and after Christmas, it went back to the worst-performing,” he added.
The Ghana cedi, has, over the past few weeks, been gaining value against Ghana’s major trading currencies, including the US dollar.
Per data from the Bank of Ghana (BoG), the cedi, as of Thursday, December 15, was buying at GH¢7.9975 to a dollar and selling at GH¢8.0056 to a dollar.
Also, the prices of petroleum products have been dropping, which has led to public transport operators announcing an over 15 percent reduction in transportation fares.
