While admitting that the Upper East Region has not benefitted from the government’s flagship One District One Factory (1D1F) policy yet, Samuel Akonga, a member of the NPP Regional Communication Team is confident that the government’s industrialisation drive, through the 1D1F is a sure way of dealing with the continued depreciation of the cedi.
Mr. Akonga made these comments when he spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show.
As a short-term measure, however, the $750 million dollars expected by the Bank of Ghana would be a stop-gap measure.
“The $750 million is coming to shore up the reserves. The long-term measure that the government took was that the government realised that there was the need; remember our mantra, the Guggisberg economy where everything was dogmatic in the sense that we are into the production of raw materials and nothing else.”
“What has government done? Government has realised that there is a need, through our 1D1F in collaboration with the private sector to ensure that some of these products that we import are produced here. For instance, the Ekumfi fruit juice factory, they have started producing. Admittedly, we do not have them [the factories] as compared to other areas.”
“Where we have got to, if other governments continue that, we will in the long term curb that menace [the rapid depreciation of the cedi].”
Mr. Akongo also encouraged the patronage of local commodities.
A recent currency performance ranking by Bloomberg has classified the Cedi as the worst-performing currency across the globe. Bloomberg tracked the performance of 150 currencies in the world and the Cedi placed last in terms of performance since the beginning of the year.
In less than 8 months, the Cedi has come under intense exchange rate pressure due to its continuous depreciation to some major international currencies such as the Dollar, Pound and Euro. According to data put out by the Bank of Ghana, the Cedi began the year at $1.00 to GH¢6.02.
Just a month ago, one could exchange $1.00 for GH¢7.43, and in less than 20 days, traders needed an average of GH¢9.37 to buy $1.00. This means the Cedi has lost most than GH¢3.30 of its value to the dollar in less done 8 months.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
