The 2024 running mate to Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, popularly known as NAPO, has cast doubt on the real-life impact of the recent appreciation of the Ghanaian cedi.
According to him, the soaring prices of basic commodities such as cement make it difficult to accept claims that the economy is genuinely improving.
In a candid interview monitored by MyNewsGH, the Minister questioned how government and economic analysts can claim progress when the cost of goods continues to soar.
“You begin to ask, what is not hard enough?” he said. “Like a bag of cement, it was 90 cedis before. It’s now 140 cedis. At that time, the dollar was 15 cedis. Now the dollar is what? 11 cedis?”
NAPO explained that despite the drop in the dollar rate, the cost of cement has jumped significantly. “At that time, the 90 cedis was about $6 something, right? Now the 140 cedis is about $14. How do you justify that?” he asked.
He stressed that a comprehensive view of the economy is essential, warning against isolated analysis of currency movements without looking at their real-world effects.
“When you are managing an economy, it is not the stop-start. You have to look at it in total,” he said.
Touching on revenue expectations, NAPO noted that the Finance Minister based his projections on a cedi-to-dollar exchange rate of 15.
While the dollar has since depreciated, NAPO argued this does not translate into proportional gains for the state. “He did all his revenue projections based upon that,” he stated. “Now he seems to have ripped dollars, but he wouldn’t get the equivalency in the cedis.”
