By Francis Kobena Tandoh
Member of Parliament (MP) for Tano Constituency, Dr. Gideon Boako has urged the government to acknowledge the significant contributions of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, former Vice President and Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the strong performance of the cedi against the U.S. dollar in recent times.
According to him, the building of gold reserves by the previous government led by the former Vice President has played a significant role to the gains made by the Ghanaian cedi.
Boako, a former Aide to Bawumia also mentioned the building of international reserves of at least three months import cover as directed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to which the Akufo-Addo-Bawumia government exceeded by December 2024 led to the removal of restrictions has enabled the current government to inject gold proceeds into the market to contain the depreciating cedi.
Find below the write up of Dr. Gideon Boako below:
Dr. Gideon Boako (Tano North MP) writes
Like the typical NDC, our Goldbod CEO, Sammy Gyamfi, is failing to appreciate the issues.
- First, the aim of Bawumia and the NPP was to build both gold and gross international reserves to appreciable levels before seeking to inject dollars into the economy as a measure to contain depreciation. Let me say that injecting dollars into the economy for such purposes is not the most prudent thing to do on a continuous basis though. There should be pragmatic efforts to address the structural defects that keep the local currency on the depreciating path.
- The IMF required that Ghana built its international reserves to cover at least 3 months of import. While that was not achieved, Ghana was restricted to only $60-80 million as interventions. The previous NPP government, by December 2024, had exceeded this 3 months of import cover requirements by the IMF, hence the removal of the restrictions.
- This removal is what has enabled this current government to inject virtually all the gold proceeds from January to date into the market to contain the depreciating cedi.
- If this quantum of reserves had not been built by the previous government there is no way the current government could pump such huge amount of dollars into the market to contain the depreciation.
- My worry is that the current government does not seem concerned to keep building on the current reserves for future use. Bear in mind that if the NPP government had not thought about the future, we were going to suffer today. Think about the future like the NPP/Bawumia did had keep building our reserves.
- You should thank Bawumia and the NPP for building such a solid reserve for you to enjoy. Don’t be ungrateful.
Ghana succeeds for all of us.
Source: Ghana Eye Report
Share Us
