Cedi depreciates only 0.6% to dollar in 7-months of 2021 – BoG

The Ghana cedi has so far this year lost a paltry 0.6% to the US dollar, data from the Bank of Ghana indicate.

The Ghanaian local currency has shown impressive run since the beginning of the year until now. But the repatriation of dividend by some multinationals, beginning June has put some pressure on the cedi.

This has increase demand for the forex though the Central Bank has regularly through the Forex Forward Auction provided dollars to the market to slow down any depreciation.

According to the Bank of Ghana, the cedi recorded 0.5% gain in April 2021, same as March 2021 and 0.2% appreciation in May 2021.

In June 2021, it registered no change in value to the American ‘greenback’ but lost 0.6% in value to the world’s most important currency.

Analysts believed the outlook of the cedi is still positive despite the recent pressures.

They say there is little to worry about due to the various interventions implemented by the Bank of Ghana as well as the strong reserve position of the country. Ghana’s international reserves presently stands at $11.02 billion.

Senior Economic Analyst at Databank Research, Courage Martey earlier told Joy Business the fundamentals are still strong to preserve stability of the local currency.

“We’ve seen a slight depreciation of 0.3% for the local currency against the US dollar in the last few days, and the Bank of Ghana indicated that they have initiated some meetings with these multinationals to better organize the flow [US dollars]. So this gives confidence that over the course of this year, the pace of depreciation shouldn’t worsen and it will still be in line with fundamentals”, he pointed out.

The cedi first five months performance made it one of the best performing currencies in Africa.

Source: Myjoyonline