The PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS have called on government to take some stringent measures to ensure the stability of the currency by banning the importation of some commodities like toilet rolls, bottled water, and second hand cooking utensils, furniture among others which in their opinion, the economy can do without.
According to them , several economic variables have been very topical over the weeks but the most critical has been the issue of the fall in the value of the cedi our domestic currency.
The Ghana Cedi from January 2014 has lost about 7% of its value against major currencies especially the United States Dollar. Though this currency plummeting is not peculiar to Ghana as South Africa and Argentina for instance have seen a 7% and 14% ?currency value depreciation ?also since January owing to the global economic downturn.
Government in this wake through the Central Bank announced some monetary policy measures to regulate the operations in the economy which we strongly embrace and consider prudent.
The PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS noted that they are?pessimistic about the long term sustenance of these policies which in our opinion are just only interim measures.
They also are concerned much more due to the dire consequences of currency devaluation to inflation, interest rate, Foreign Direct Investment and the overall welfare of the citizenry.
“Domestically, several occurrences like excessive imports exceeding exports has been a major factor contributing to the excessive demand for foreign currencies confirming the rudimentary economics of price increasing when demand exceeds supply.?According to records imports for the year 2012 was $4 billion whiles export was $7 Billion. In 2013, export increased to $ 8billion but was outweighed by the higher relative increase in import to about $13Billion. This has been a major bottleneck to health of our domestic currency.”
“We also pray government to take drastic measures towards cutting down the importation of rice, frozen chicken, sugar, and eggs by boosting the capacities and creating auxiliary institutions for local industries.?We also suggest government invest more in the Non-Traditional Export(NTE) since the major export commodities like gold and cocoa which contributes about 60% of the total export earnings have had significant fall due to the international market price for the commodities falling making the economy lose about $1.3bn in the preceding year.”
This, this said, shows clearly a bleak fortune in the foreseeable future and affords us the opportunity to look at other lucrative avenues like the non-traditional export which has been largest export earner after cocoa and gold.
Progressive Democrats urges government to with immediate effect implement long term policies by taking into consideration our propositions to help extricate the currency from any future replication of this level of devaluation and help build a better economy and A BETTER GHANA.
