Dr Abdul Nashir Issahaku, BoG Governor
A few days after President John Mahama announced that the local currency was the best performing on the continent, the local currency yesterday shed some 0.0015 pesewas or 0.04 percent to 3.9865 to the US dollar from 3.9880 in the previous trading session.
On the black market, the local currency has crossed the GH¢4 to a dollar.
The currency changed +0.87 percent last week and +0.29 percent during the last month.
The cedi has recently been described as one of the worst performing currencies in the world as a result of weak fundamentals and some misguided policies of the Central Bank.
Dr Mahamadu Bawumia, Vice Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the 2016 general elections, said that the cumulative depreciation of the local currency in the last seven years that stood at 70 percent was expected to be at least 90 percent by the end of 2016.
He said the cedi depreciated from GH¢1.20 to the dollar in 2009 to GH¢4.70 to the dollar earlier this year.
The Ghana cedi ended the first half of this year with a depreciation of 3.04 per cent against the US dollar.
The local currency has been trading at almost GH¢3.99 to the US dollar at the forex bureau and GH¢3.93 on the interbank market.
For the first quarter of this year, the cedi registered a marginal 7 pesewas loss in value against the dollar, about 0.48 percent depreciation.
It lost about 60 pesewas in value to it last year ending at about GH¢3.80.
Investment firm Investcorp this year projected that unstable economic fundamentals, high imports and fiscal imbalances, were expected to affect the cedi this year.
The local currency lost value by about 1.7 percent to the US dollar in January 2016.
Historically, the Ghanaian Cedi reached an all time high of 151.50 in July of 2011 and a record low of 0.90 in July of 2007.
By Samuel Boadi