Director of Strategy and Business Operations at Dalex Finance, Mr Joe Jackson has said Ghanaians are already aware of the issues affecting the cedi hence there is no need to form a committee to investigate the issues.
He suggested that Ghana must rather adopt policies that ensure that more dollars are brought into the country in order to shore up the cedi
“The issue is not that somebody is playing with your dollar. The issue is that as a nation, we don’t bring in enough dollars. The dollars we bring in, where do they go?”, he questioned.
The Finance Ministry last week launched the 40-member Forex Committee to, among other things look into issues causing the fall of the cedi against the major trading currencies.
But Mr Jackson said on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class 91.3FM on Tuesday, 21 January 2020 that: “That 40-member committee, I don’t know whatever they are going to say that we don’t already know. I was in the economics department first year at the University in 1985 and everything this committee is going to say we already know them.”
The Executive Secretary of the Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana, Sampson Awingobit also speaking on the same show agreed with Mr Jackson. He said the formation of the committee was needles because the issues affecting the local currency are well-known by the BoG and the Ministry of Finance.
“We have the Bank of Ghana which looks at monetary policy, we have the Ministry of Finance which also looks at fiscal policies. So now, the BoG and the Ministry of Finance have to work in coherent.”
“Are you telling me that the BoG is not aware of the group of people on the Black Market that when the BoG sets the daily rate for the banks, the banks also turn to direct people to go to the black market to trade?” he quizzed.
“Is this committee coming to say arrest the Alhajis at the black market and prosecute them? The BoG is aware of these issues, they know about these things happening on the black market.”
Prescribing another solution, Mr Awingobit said “We need to look at our manufacturing aspect, we need to look at export. Currently we are lacking in export. We don’t have so much non-traditional commodities that we are exporting. We need to go to the non-traditional ones more.”
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Classfm
