Address cedi depreciation immediately – Gatsi tells gov’t
The Dean of the University of Cape Coast Business School (UCCBS), Prof. John Gatsi, has raised concerns about how the government has failed to roll out effective measures to address the rapid depreciation of the Ghana Cedi against the US dollar.
According to Prof. Gatsi, the government was supposed to be proactive to prevent the current situation where the value of the dollar is almost double compared to the cedi.
Prof. Gatsi was of the view that the government is not treating the current situation with urgency.
“You have exhausted what is called the short-term measures because the thing is demand and supply, and you don’t have the resources for the next move. But you can also do something that will give positive signals, yet we are not doing that.
“In fact, in the past two weeks, we have not been behaving like we are in a crisis,” the Dean of UCCBS stated.
Speaking on the ongoing IMF-supported program, Prof. Gatsi advised the government to be open on how it handles debt restructuring.
“If you have sent a five-member committee to collect facts for debt management strategy, the debt management strategy by the Financial Management Act is the job of the Finance Minister and his team. If, in their opinion, they are done, and you cannot open up that you are doing debt restructuring, then the approach is wrong.
“People will read different kinds of meanings, especially on the back of the financial and banking sector clean-up. People had their money locked up, and at a point, the investment of citizens was forced into mutual funds against their will. There are people who cannot also access their locked-up funds up till today,” Mr. Gatsi lamented.
He continued: “So if the government is going to be empowered to determine the sense of elongation then the citizens have to know the maturity period of their investment. As well as to also know whether they may be taxing their principal or the interest. If you are hiding this and they get to know they will be reacting and that’s what the banks are experiencing.”
He was speaking in an interview monitored by The Ghana Report on Starr FM.