The Minister of Information has said the government is looking forward to pushing over $2 billion into the Ghanaian economy to reverse the downward trend of the cedi against other major currencies.
Kojo Oppong Nkrumah explained that $750 million dollars expected from the Afremix Bank would hit the accounts of the Bank of Ghana this week, whilst the cocoa syndicated loan will add $1.3 billion.
He assured that the depreciation of the cedi to the dollar would soon be a thing of the past as the local currency would be stabilized.
“The Bank of Ghana introduced a number of measures in the short term to deal with it, and on the back of that… the $750 million that we were expecting, all the paperwork has been concluded, and it should be hitting our accounts today or tomorrow.”
“If I were you, and I was holding onto dollars, I would be selling them by now because there is a lot more dollar coming in from the $750 million and also from the Cocoa Syndicated Loan of about $1.3 billion,” the minister said in an interview with Citi News.
This comes at the back of the Ghana Cedi being identified as the worst performing currency worldwide in a current currency ranking done by Bloomberg.
The Ghanaian legal tender was placed last among 150 currencies in the world tracked by their performance since the beginning of the year.
The Sri Lankan rupee came second to the cedi in the ranking.
For more than seven months, the cedi has come under intense exchange rate pressure due to its continuous depreciation to major international currencies such as the Dollar, Pound and Euro.
According to data from the Bank of Ghana (BoG), the cedi began the year at $1.00 to GH¢6.02.
A month ago, one could exchange $1.00 for GH¢7.43; in less than 20 days, traders needed an average of GH¢9.37 to buy $1.00.
The BoG convened an emergency Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting on 17 August 2022 over recent challenges the Ghanaian economy faces.
The meeting, according to the apex bank, will review developments on ways to deal with the sharp depreciation of the cedi and the rising inflation.
According to the apex bank, the meeting also reviewed economic developments over the past month.
The Monetary Policy Committee was initially scheduled to hold its next meeting from 20 September to 23rd 2022.
“The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of Ghana will hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday, 17 August 2022, to review recent developments in the economy. The meeting will conclude with an announcement of the decisions of the committee,” a statement from the central bank announced.
MPC meetings are mainly attended by officials of the Bank of Ghana, some banking consultants and economists.
The central bank is the second in sub-Saharan Africa after the Bank of Uganda to hold an emergency meeting since Russia’s war with Ukraine erupted in February.