Persons with no immediate use for dollar should be barred from buying them – Economist

An economist at the University of Ghana, Professor William Baah-Boateng, has asked the Bank of Ghana to ensure that persons who do not need dollars for business or payment of fees are not given access to buy them.

According to him, such persons also account for the depreciation of the cedi.

“And that is what it’s supposed to be because the dollar is not a medium of exchange in Ghana. People keep dollars as a store of value.

“And therefore, if the Bank of Ghana is able to strengthen that part and say that if you don’t have any dollar account, you don’t have anything about dollars and then you have your cedis and say I want to change my cedis into dollar when we know that you’re not an importer when we know that you’re not travelling, when we know that you’re not using it to pay fees, Central Bank should not allow that,” he is quoted by myjoonline.com.

He re-echoed that a unique means of identification must be enforced to reduce the speculative aspect of the cedi’s depreciation.

“And I think they can also go further as we have always said that going forward, the Central Bank should also make sure that people will not just walk into forex bureau and just change money as it were.

“They need to identify themselves with the Ghana card, with their passport, and that is the regulation that we talked about so that we don’t allow the market forces to determine anything as we have in the tomato market,” he said.

SSD/FNOQ