James Klutse Avedzi, Deputy Minority Leader in Parliament, has questioned President Akufo-Addo on why he did not talk about the depreciating cedi in his 2019 State of the Nation Address (SONA 2019) in Parliament.
Mr Avedzi says it is worrying that President Akufo-Addo did brief Ghanaians about the state of the cedi and how his government intends to rescue it.
“And the president completely avoided the talk about the performance of the cedi, I have never heard the president said the cedi is depreciating at the low pace, he never talked about it. So he completely avoided it,†Mr Avedzi said whilst reacting to the address in a radio interview with Accra based Joy FM.
To Mr Avedzi, President Akufo-Addo avoided the talk about the cedi, “because he [Akufo-Addo] knew that the cedi is depreciating at a faster rate that he doesn’t feel comfortable talking about it and that is why the President didn’t mention it at all in his state of the nation address,†he said.
James Klutse Avedzi, Deputy Minority Leader in Parliament
“This is something that the president must talk about because it is very important to the businessman, the president should tell us what he is going to do to arrest the fall of the value of the cedi, he didn’t talk about it.
“So as we speak now, the cedi is running over Ghc5.27, so what will it be at the end of the year or the middle of the year, what is the president going to do to ensure that the value of the cedi is stable. I am not impressed and we will come with the debate on it from Tuesday,“ he added.
Mr Avedzi disagreed with the President's stance on the country's GDP as the best ever and said, “within two years, we have borrowed as a country over Ghc50 billion, the President decided to use the re-based numbers to calculate debt to GDP ratio, and where he says that the debt to GDP ratio has dropped from 57 per cent to 54 per cent, so that is what he decided to do, to use the rebased figure.â€
Adding, he said he disagreed with the President completely.
“We were here when we borrowed 2.25 billion from Franklin Templeton which was a foreign borrowing because it was denominated in dollars and then yet we applied local rate of 19.75 per cent, that cannot be borrowing with the low-interest rate.â€
The Ghanaian Cedi has been depreciating against major trading currencies for the past few weeks. The Cedi is trading at 5.23 against the US Dollar.
Read also: Check why the Cedi is depreciating
Source: Primenewsghana/ additional files from graphic