The Director of Communications for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Richard Ahiagbah, has accused President John Dramani Mahama’s administration of creating what he called a temporary illusion of stability around the Ghanaian cedi, arguing that its current struggles expose the unsustainable nature of earlier interventions.
Ahiagbah described the recent depreciation of the cedi as proof that previous measures to stabilize the currency were not rooted in sound policy.
“Now what we’re seeing is the cedi actually getting to a place where it is standing on its own, competing in the marketplace and its value as we are seeing is depleting. The artificial inducement they’ve given to the cedi, we’re losing it,” Ahiagbah said on Channel One TV’s The Big Issue.
He argued that the Central Bank’s earlier actions, supported by President Mahama, amounted to wasteful spending that only created a “mirage of performance.”
“And technically if you’re looking at it, I am inclined to say that, that was financial waste or financial loss, by dumping all of those things to create a certain appearance of performance.
“We’ve been asking them what exactly did you do to bring the cedi down the rate at which they brought it. It was not policy, if it was policy then it is just simple policy, let’s provide the dollars. But that’s not sustainable,” he added.
But President John Dramani Mahama has defended the Bank of Ghana’s earlier interventions, insisting that they were necessary to prevent steep depreciation that had already begun to destabilize the economy.
“I believe that it is about stopping rapid depreciation of the currency. When you have steep depreciation of about like we had in 2024, 25% depreciation in the currency in the first half of the year, it makes planning difficult.
“And so yes, Bank of Ghana has been intervening in the forex market but they’ve withdrawn,” Mahama explained at his September 10 media engagement at Jubilee House.
