Financial analyst advocates government action amidst forex market challenges

Financial analyst and president of Women In Forex, Gifty Annor Sika, in the wake of recent network disruptions that sent shock waves through the financial sector, has asked for the urgent need for robust infrastructure to support digital finance in Africa.

Speaking at the Love in the Market charity ball under the Elevate Ghana Forex Project, on the theme; 'Digital Finance, A Boom or Doom to the African Economy', she emphasized the critical role of digitalization in driving economic growth but underscored the lack of foundational support, particularly in terms of data infrastructure.

"Digital finance in general is a boom for every economy in Africa and other continents. We however, don't have the fundamentals, we do not have enough infrastructure in terms of our data.

You can see what happened with the internet a week ago, banks, forex traders and lots of businesses that depend on the internet to operate were halted. If we are able to sustain a robust infrastructure for digitalization, we will have more booms than dooms but now, I think we are in the doom, because we do not have the fundamentals to sustain what we are looking for," she asserted.

"We have been advocating for the past four, five years and we hear it's coming on next year, we are doing this, we are doing that I will use this opportunity again to advocate for the need of financial structures. If we have companies coming in to create job opportunities for forex traders, we wouldn't even have to trade in dollars but in the cedis.

Every forex trader in Ghana trades in dollars, we now have to take a lot of cedis, change to dollars to trade and these come with charges that go to other foreign companies outside the country but if you have regulation, you will not need to do that and the more forex traders are trained toy trade in cedis the more the cedis can compete with other currencies, for now, cedis is not trade-able on the market at all," she added.

Lamenting the the impact and vulnerabilities exposed by such disruptions, Annor Sika pointed that "every major forex trader lost, from Ghana, Nigeria especially South Africa, because they are regulated so a lot of people trade there. It is going into millions, not in Ghana but South Africa because we do not have a lot of forex traders in Ghana. It wasn't good at all. If it had lasted, I think a lot of people would have gone bankrupt, speaking specifically for forex traders".

Addressing concerns about money laundering and fraudulent activities in the forex market, Annor stressed the importance of regulation and licensing.

"If there's a way the government is able to regulate the forex market through some research development to get something going there.

"It easier for people to launder money with forex because it's online, first of all it is not licensed and registered in the country especially with crypto currencies, it is not even allowed in the country if I'm supposed to do 10,000, someone may say I can't transfer more than 10,000 through the banking system, I'll buy myself a Bitcoin and the government will not get any charges and will not get any idea about it, back to the regulation and licensing," highlighting the necessity for government intervention to protect citizens and maintain market integrity," the financial analyst explained.

The Love in the Market charity ball under the Elevate Ghana Project is aimed at raising funds to aid forex training and support girls in rural areas under the 'Pad a Girl Project'.