Cedi depreciation: Govt to inject about $2bn into the economy.

Minister of Information, Mr. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah.

The Minister of information, Mr. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has told Ghanaians to breathe easy since the government plans to pump roughly $2 billion into the struggling Ghanaian economy.

Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah said as much in an interview with citinewsroom that, the rapid fall of the cedi, will be a thing of the past, very soon.

The Ghana cedi has been steadily losing value this year versus the world's most-used trading currencies, in particular, the American dollar.

The cedi has dropped in value by almost 20% since July of this year. The current market exchange rate for the local currency against the US dollar is more than GH10.00.

The minister who allayed public concerns said that although $750 million is due from the Afremix Bank this week, another $1.3 billion would come from the cocoa syndicated loan. Those funds, he claimed, will soon be deposited into the Bank of Ghana's account.

"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 that, all the paperwork has been concluded, and it should be hitting our accounts today or tomorrow, he said.

"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 added.

This action, as stated by Oppong-Nkrumah, is in line with the government's hope for a "rapid stabilisation" of the economy.

According to Bloomberg's latest list of global currencies, the cedi is the second-worst performing currency in the world, behind only the Sri Lankan Rupee.

Increases in foreign exchange (FX) supply to banks are one of the actions the Bank of Ghana has promised would be taken in the near future to assist satisfy rising FX requests for external payments.

Source: ghananews.hrforum.uk