Dr John Kumah
GHANA’S CEDI has been described as the third strongest currency in Africa despite its continuous depreciation against the dollor in recent times.
Deputy Minister of Finance, John Kumah, who disclosed this, was speaking to Joy News.
According to him, currencies across the world were experiencing depreciations and therefore people could not attribute the poor performance of the cedi to mismanagement.
“Ghana is third actually according to any global ranking of currencies. I am talking about the strength of currencies in Africa. The Libyan Dinar, followed by Tunisian Dinar and then Ghana cedi is the third strongest currency in Africa. But, maybe they were talking about the rate of depreciation.
“And look, I’ve heard all the propaganda; they said the Ghana cedi is the worst in Africa and all kinds of things. Look, don’t believe those propaganda. I just returned from Tunisia on a programme, and Tunisia has the second strongest currency in Africa,” he stated.
“I just saw what is happening in Nigeria and they are equally complaining that their Naira is not just four hundred and something to the dollar, sometimes they can’t even find the dollar. So this is a global situation. So it is not just a Ghana situation, it is something that is happening globally and people should not begin to think that it’s as a result of some bad policy or whatever,” he added.
The Deputy Minister also mentioned that to address these challenges, Government has intervened with various measures to stabilise the continuous fall of the cedi in addition to the gold buying measures to shore up Ghana’s gold buying reserves.
“But the good news is that, like we announced, Government is intervening with this foreign exchange auctions which occasionally Bank of Ghana does, to intervene in the market to bring calm and stability to the foreign exchange front,” Dr Kumah noted.
By Ebenezer K. Amponsah