The Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA) is raising serious concerns over measures being taken by the Government to arrest the free fall of the Ghanaian Cedi.
On Tuesday, August 23, 2022, Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah disclosed that the Government of Ghana is expected to inject some $2 Billion Dollars into the economy to shore up the rapid depreciation of the country’s currency.
Speaking to Accra based Citi FM, the Information Minister says some 750 million dollars expected from the Afremix Bank will hit the accounts of the Bank of Ghana this week, whilst the cocoa syndicated loan will add $1.3 billion.
The Ghanaian Cedi is currently trading at GH₵10 Cedis to the United States Dollars but Mr Oppong Nkrumah says the $2bn USD will help stabilize the cedi against the dollar.
Reacting to this, however, the ASEPA Boss, Mr Mensah Thompson described what the Information Minister said as propaganda and a facade aimed at deceiving market players to bring out their dollars to spend.
Below is the full State from Mr Mensah Thompson
This is the propaganda tactics of government that have sent the Cedi into a spiral free fall but as usual government never learns.
In April this year when the Cedi started depreciating rapidly, we were told that the bank of Ghana was going into inject about $1.5billion into circulation.
The market players speculated that if prices come down, they would loose much of their money so they started bringing out their dollars, the relative supply kept prices stabilized for about three weeks ONLY, when the market realized that the so called $1.5billion injection was “audio money” because demand pressures were rising, they started hoarding again further an further escalating demand prices which pushed prices on a roller coaster.
Today the Cedi is 10cedis to the dollar and we are being told some $2billion injection is coming soon to stabilize prices…$750million loan from Afriexim and $1.3billion cocoa syndicated loan.
This is a farcade and the government knows very little of this money is coming into the system but they will play propaganda with it because they know the market would speculate, problem is that will stabilize prices only for a moment and the free fall kicks in again.
The $750million loan, not even a pesewa is coming into Ghana, our maturing external debt obligation in the next window(September/October 2022) is $750million, when that money hits BoG’s account, BoG will keep that money to settle the maturing debt obligations because there’s already pressure on your reserves.
As for the $1.3billion syndicated loan, two things, one, there existing obligations that would eat half the money, the annual corruption pressure on the loan will also take it share and you very little to actually inject.
The demand vacuum created by the long supply gap in the few months will swallow any major injection within days not to talk of a marginal injection.
The BDC’s demand pressures alone is enough to swallow that injection, then importers and traders looking for dollars to import Christmas goods would then re-dig the supply hole in weeks.
It is this audio approach of the exchange rate has brought us here, if government wants to inject, they should inject and let the supply surplus determine prices instead trying capitalize on speculator sentiments to force prices down.
That has never worked!!
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