Dr Ernest Addison, Governor of BoG
EXPORT RECEIPTS for the first half of the year remained robust at nearly $8.0 billion, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) has said.
Together with a relatively lower import bill, the receipts positively impacted on the trade account. Provisional trade balance for the first half of this year recorded a surplus of $1.9 billion (2.8% of GDP), compared to a surplus of US$1.3 billion (1.9% of GDP) in the first half of 2018.
The trade surplus was partly offset by net outflows in the services and income accounts, leading to a marginal current account surplus of US$39 million (0.1% of GDP) in the first half of 2019, compared to a deficit of US$409 million (0.6% of GDP) in the same period last year.
Dr Ernest Addison, Governor of BoG, who made this known, said the current account surplus, though marginal, was the first in recent history.
“This surplus, together with significant inflows to the capital and financial account, yielded an overall balance of payments surplus of $1.3 billion (1.9% of GDP) over the review period, compared with a deficit of $372 million (0.6% of GDP) last year.”
On gross international reserves (GIR), he said it stood at $8.6 billion (equivalent to 4.3 months of import cover) at the end of June 2019 up from US$7.0 billion (equivalent to 3.6 months of import cover) at the end of December 2018.
Public debt
In line with the above developments, he announced that the stock of public debt rose to 58.1% of GDP (GH¢200.0 billion) at the end of May 2019 compared with 51.0% of GDP (GH¢153.4 billion) at the end of May 2018.
Of the total debt stock, domestic debt was GH¢94.6 billion (27.5% of GDP), of which GH¢11.0 billion (or 3.2% of GDP) represented bonds issued to support the financial sector clean-up, while external debt was GH¢105.4 billion (30.6% of GDP).
Domestic currency
The domestic currency market, he pointed out, remained relatively calm.
The Ghana Cedi cumulatively depreciated by 8.2% in the year to July 18, 2019 compared with 5.8% for the corresponding period of 2018.
Against the British Pound and Euro, the Ghana Cedi cumulatively depreciated by 5.9% and 6.5% respectively compared with 2.5% and 2.9% depreciation respectively over the same corresponding period.
In trade-weighted terms, the real effective exchange rate continued to be broadly aligned with the underlying fundamentals.
BY Samuel Boadi