Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Ghana Industries, Seth Twum Akwaboah, says the outcome of the Bank of Ghana’s measures to control Ghana’s rising inflation has not been particularly positive for businesses in the country.
According to him, although these policy measures may have worked in previous years, they are currently failing to produce the same desired effect.
“It looks like our fundamentals are so weak that even though Bank of Ghana is introducing these measures, we’re not seeing the positive effects that we expect,” he said.
He added that “I mean if you look at the past three or so policy rate review of the monetary policy committee meetings, they’re always reviewing and revising the policy rate upwards. So one would have expected that by now, inflation would have come down drastically, but it’s not happening. So it means that there is something more to it than merely increasing the policy rate.”
His comment comes on the back of the Bank of Ghana increasing the policy rate by 300 basis points to 22%, after an Emergency Monetary Policy Committee meeting on August 17th, 2022.
The move is part of measures to address the risks to the inflation outlook.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express Business Edition, he noted that the failure of the BoG’s measures to stabilize the economy is indicative of the fact that more needs to be done to solve the current crisis.
“So some of the measures that the Bank of Ghana is planning to introduce include discussions with the mining sector, and to ensure that the export proceeds are repatriated home, and then being able to buy the dollars that they get is all measures that we need to see.
“For now, it’s very difficult to predict the situation. No one can tell which particular measure will be the game changer; a combination of things must happen. So we need to monitor the situation and see but I think what we’re finding ourselves in now is quite a challenging one,” he said.