Business owners in Accra have identified the depreciation of the cedi against major foreign currencies as their major challenge and want the government to stem the situation.
They contend that the development continues to impact their operations adversely.
The comments come three days ahead of President Akufo Addo’s State of the Nation Address to Parliament on Thursday, February 8, 2018.
“If I’m to rate the President, I’ll give him 40 percent because he is doing some good things. But for us, especially the travel and tours industry, because I deal with the Abossey Okai spare parts dealers, the volatile exchange rate regime really affects my business. If they can’t travel to bring in goods then I lose money,” one business woman stressed.
Another stated, “Before Nana Akufo-Addo came into office, the business was okay and people were buying a lot of items from us. But now they don’t have the money to buy it and business has become very slow.”
Checks also indicate that the government would have to do more in order to meet its main economic targets for this year.
The government was unable to meet some targets projected for the first year in office.
For 2017, government targeted to rake in an estimated GH¢44.9 billion and spend about GH¢58 billion.
But official figures from the Ministry of Finance indicate that as at September last year, government spent GH¢36 billion in areas such as wages and salary, capital expenditure on roads and other infrastructure, among others.
Revenue accrued stood at GH¢28.4 billion as at September last year.
This comprised tax revenue of about GH¢22 billion and non tax revenue of about GH¢3.8 billion.
Meanwhile, inflation ended last year at 11.8 percent, up from the government’s projected 11.2 percent.
It however suggest that the government’s projected economic growth target of 6.3 percent could be achieved as figures from the Ghana Statistical Service show that the economy grew by about 7 percent as at September last year.
Even though the cedi has witnessed marginal stability against the dollar, it depreciated by 3.4 percent to the dollar on the average in 2017.
On the country’s debt, the total debt stock hit GH¢139 billion as of November 2017, representing 69 percent of GDP.
–Citifmonline