Dr Ernest Addison
THE BANK of Ghana (BoG) has launched a Refinitive Matching Platform for Ghana’s interbank forex exchange (FX) Market.
Speaking at the launch in Accra on Thursday, February 20, 2020, the Governor of the Central Bank, Dr. Ernest Addison, described the platform as a key technological intervention in Ghana’s interbank FX market.
According to him, over the years the Bank of Ghana has been implementing FX market reforms to enhance transparency, improve price discovery and increase availability of FX hedging products.
Ultimately, he stated, a deeper FX market in the context of a flexible exchange rate regime and stable inflation environment would increase resilience of the Ghanaian economy against external shocks.
The governor indicated that it was within this context that in February 2019 and October 2019, the bank introduced the Ghana interbank market rules and forward FX auctions respectively.
“Since then we have managed to move our reform process a notch higher and the reason why we have gathered here today to launch the Refinitive Spot Matching platform,” he said.
“The Refinitive Spot Matching platform is a trusted primary FX market platform with unique features designed to support an order book that ensures back-to-back trading with firm prices in a transparent fashion to encourage genuine trading interest,” he added.
He observed that over the years, FX trading in Ghana had primarily occurred in over-the- counter (OTC) markets, where relationship trading played a vital role in the dealer-to-client and interdealer markets for accessing liquidity and managing risk.
“Unfortunately markets that trade primarily through OTC relationships are by nature highly fragmented and lack transparency,” he bemoaned.
He added that but the FX market was increasingly evolving and factors such as technology, regulation, security and structural changes were constantly driving market and industry behaviour.
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BY Melvin Tarlue