The role of the apex bank in what befell the country’s forex exchange situation is worth dissecting.
We are in a trance of sorts as we reminisce the crazy fall of the national currency to the dollar, and the implications on prices in the country until things changed almost immediately, when the 80 heroic MPs intervened with an ultimatum. It was as though the country was under a fiscal spell. Wicked traders had a field day as arbitrariness and not forces of demand and supply ruled their decisions.
We are certainly out of the woods somewhat. The speculators have been silenced and the black market actors shaken, with the knowledge that their business could suffer a state sledgehammer, now that even the President has mentioned their role in what befell the country’s economy a fortnight ago.
We lend our support to those who think that the apex bank did not do well and could not have slept on its assignments leading to the fiscal bedlam which visited the country.
As the cedi suffered its nightmarish fiscal ailment, falling almost continuously against the dollar, Ghanaians were looking up to the apex bank for an intervention.
When the Governor of the bank eventually spoke, he attributed the situation to the black market actors. We were taken aback at the defeatist response.
The implication is that the apex bank, with all the authorities bestowed upon it by law to deal with such issues, slept on its mandate and allowed a group of unlicensed actors to dictate the cedi rate against the dollar. Black market operators had overrun the country’s economy as it was.
The apex bank, as represented by the Governor, deserves a query for such admission.
In the heat of the cedi’s humiliation came an announcement that the licences of two forex bureaux had been revoked. Why now if we may ask? How much damage had the two bureaux inflicted on the economy until the action?
The two banks represent only a tip of the iceberg and so, we think that further probe should be undertaken to determine details of others whose roles contributed to what befell our currency.
The matter at stake is critical and so we would demand a full disclosure so that never again in our fiscal history, should we go through such a nightmare.
We do not want to think that as the confusion played out, the apex bank’s intelligence unit did not know what was happening and the roles of some bank managers, as they colluded with black market actors across the country especially in Accra.
The announcement following the daily fall of the cedi by some channels came with a certain glee, developments being fed them by some officials thought to be the apex bank staff. Such an unholy collusion provided an impetus for the further fall of the national cedi providing the encouragement for speculators to lap the dollars when they came.
The Governor should convince the people of Ghana that he has no questions to answer about that happened to our national currency.
But for the threats of the 80 heroic MPs of the NPP and the subsequent action by the President through engagements with relevant stakeholders, it would only have been conjectured what would have happened by now.