Ghana’s foreign reserves see significant improvement – First Deputy Governor

Ghana’s foreign reserves have improved significantly and are sufficient to cover more than five months of prospective imports, the Bank of Ghana (BoG), has indicated.

The country’s foreign reserves as of August 2021, stood at $11.4 billion.

Foreign reserves are funds central banks exchange with each other at an international level and the reserves can either be in gold or in an internationally-accepted commodity, like the dollar or the euro.

Dr Opoku-Afari stated this in an address read on his behalf by the Director of Research of BoG, Philip Abradu-Otoo during the opening ceremony of a two-day training workshop on financial literacy for selected economic and financial journalists from the Northern sector.

He said the strong reserves hold up had provided the necessary buffer for the local currency to withstand increased forex demand, consistent with the recent pick up in import demand.

Under the theme, “Understanding the Monetary Policies in a Post Pandemic Era”, the workshop, organized by the Journalists for Business Advocacy (JBA), was funded by the BoG.

Dr Opoku-Afari said the BoG was working hard to make the local currency strong as it was necessary in sustaining the gains made so far in achieving macroeconomic stability in the phase of the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

He acknowledged the harm the pandemic had on the global economy, which brought untold hardships to the people, but indicated that “the Cedi’s resilience during the pandemic has been so much, and contributed immensely to the generally stable price index in the economy.”

The First Deputy Governor said as inflation targets Central Bank, BoG believed that transparency was key in promoting the credibility of the bank’s policies.

“This is the reason we take these engagements seriously in the hope that they sufficiently disseminate our policies to anchor inflation expectations and support the recovery process, ” he said.

The President of JBA, Suleiman Mustapha, advised economic and financial journalists to be more responsible in their reportage on financial issues for the public to appreciate the harm the COVID-19 pandemic had on the world economies.

He said economic and financial reporting was a complex but simple and interesting field, stressing that financial journalists must build their capacities to be able to report on sector accurately.

He commended the BoG for being one of the major financiers of JBA activities in the past five years and assured that JBA would continue to collaborate with the relevant partners to achieve the needed results.

Participants were taken through topics such as monetary policy practice in Ghana, understanding inflation as a policy tool, understanding the balance of payments, and forex trading and foreign exchange markets.

Source: Ghanaian Times