Government is working with the Bank of Ghana and oil-producing and mining companies to introduce a new legal and regulatory framework to ensure that all foreign exchange earned from operations in Ghana is initially paid to local banks.
This is to help boost the domestic foreign exchange market and prevent forex fluctuations.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo announced this in a televised address on Sunday night on measures the government is putting in place to rescue the nation from the throes of economic crisis.
The President indicated that the recent turbulences in the financial markets were caused by low inflows of foreign exchange, and made worse in the last two to three weeks by the activities of speculators and the black market.
He cited an anonymous two-minute audio message on a WhatsApp platform predicting a so-called “haircut” on Government bonds, which made many Ghanaians, businesses, banks and forex bureaus to dump the Cedi.
That unnecessary speculations on the forex market, he said, caused further depreciation of the Cedi.
“All of us can play a part in helping to strengthen the Cedi by having confidence in the currency, and avoiding speculation,” the President stated.
“Let us keep our Cedi as the good store of value it is. To those who make it a habit of publishing falsehoods, which result in panic in the system, I say to them that the relevant State agencies will act against such persons,” the President warned.
He assured that some steps had been taken to restore order in the forex markets and “we are already beginning to see some calm returning”.
He said government would not relent until order was completely restored and that it was enhancing the supervisory action by the Bank of Ghana in the forex bureau markets and the black market to flush out illegal operators.
He noted that some forex bureaus had had their licenses revoked already, and that, that exercise would continue until complete order was restored in the sector.
More so, fresh inflows of dollars were providing liquidity to the foreign exchange market and addressing the pipeline demand.
The Bank of Ghana, he said, had given its full commitment to the commercial banks to provide liquidity to ensure the wheels of the economy continued to run in a stabilised manner till the IMF Programme kicked in alongside the financing assurances expected from other partners.
The President expressed optimism that those immediate measures would go a long way to sanitise the foreign exchange market.
