By Francis Kobena Tandoh
The government has assured it will address exchange rate pressures and inflation to ensure predictability to businesses and households, Finance Minister, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson announced Tuesday in the Ghanaian capital of Accra.
Delivering the 2025 budget statement of the government to Parliament, the minister observed that the government will put in motion a number of structures to complement that of the country’s Central Bank to stabilize the exchange rate regime and inflation.
The development is expected to ensure stabilize the exchange rate regime to offer conducive environment to businesses to spur growth.
“Mr. Speaker, government will implement a number of measures to complement Bank of Ghana’s monetary and exchange rate policies to stabilize inflation and the exchange rate,” said Dr. Forson.
Among a raft of measures announced by the minister include the establishment of a GoldBod to enhance the generation and accumulation forex to support the stability of the cedi, the Central Bank to continue to implement its forex forward auctions to support stability of the cedi, government to undertake strong fiscal consolidation through the reduction in public sector spending as well as the introduction of an impot substitution drive under the 24-hour economy involving the domestic production of key products originally imported.
On fixing the problem of inflation, Dr. Ato Forson said there will be specific interventions including the Agriculture for Economic Transformation agenda, government to implement policies that target items with large weights in the CPI basket and pursue aggressive fiscal consolidation drive aimed at reducing the fiscal deficit and borrowing.
Others are a strategy to improve exchange rate stability and reduce imported inflation and fuel prices as well as the Central Bank will maintain an appropriate monetary policy stance and use its liquidity management interventions to support the disinflation process.
