{"id":1133193,"date":"2022-06-24T13:23:14","date_gmt":"2022-06-24T13:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/06\/24\/usd350m-forex-shortfall-pushes-some-bdcs-to-black-market\/"},"modified":"2022-06-24T13:23:14","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T13:23:14","slug":"usd350m-forex-shortfall-pushes-some-bdcs-to-black-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/06\/24\/usd350m-forex-shortfall-pushes-some-bdcs-to-black-market\/","title":{"rendered":"USD350m forex shortfall pushes some BDCs to black market\u202f"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n Accra, June 24, GNA – Some Bulk Oil Distributing Companies (BDCs) are going to the unregulated forex market (black market) to shore up dollar requirement to import oil into the country.<\/p>\n
This is because the Bank of Ghana and the Commercial Banks are unable to meet the dollar supply, leaving a gap of USD350 to be filled to enable BDCs import needed oil monthly.\u202f<\/div>\n
While BDCs require about $450m monthly, the Central Bank is currently providing $100 dollars per month, having reduced its supply requirement from $214m at the opening window.\u202f<\/div>\n
Mr Senyo Hosi, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Ghana Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors (CBOD), said the country could \u201cover time have a major fuel crisis\u201d if the forex challenges were not addressed immediately.\u202f<\/div>\n
Responding to a question posed to him by the Ghana News Agency on Thursday during a virtual engagement with the media, he said, \u201cBDCs do go to the black market, but it\u2019s not the norm.\u201d\u202f<\/div>\n
\u201cWith this indication that 21 per cent is what\u2019s been covered for this month, you\u2019re going to find the commercial banks cover 79 per cent. They may do it in different phases, some of them will lag and that\u2019s where the problems are. If there\u2019re challenges with them filling that gap, over time, we\u2019re going to have a major supply challenge,\u201d he said.\u202f<\/div>\n
\u201cThe black market isn\u2019t the default option, it\u2019s the commercial banks. Our solutions going forward will not include illegality, so we\u2019re looking at working with the commercial banks to compensate for it,\u201d Mr Hosi said.\u202f<\/div>\n
Mr Hosi who is also a Finance and Economic Policy Analyst stated that: \u201cAll that BDCs want is petroleum prices reflecting the actual currency rate that they sell and them accessing the forex when they need it.\u201d\u202f<\/div>\n
He explained that the current challenge of BDCs on the forex market was due to the non-availability of liquidity as well as pricing, which is much lower than the requirement of companies. \u202f<\/div>\n
\u201cThose are the things that the international oil traders are seeing and it\u2019s making them apprehensive, and that\u2019s why Bloomberg will come and speak [about looming fuel shortage] because they\u2019re seeing a possible withdrawal of supplies,\u201d he said.\u202f<\/div>\n
The Chamber\u2019s CEO allayed fears of any shortage in fuel in the country, and said: \u201cThankfully, we\u2019ve already initiated steps to address some of these, and we\u2019ve been doing this with the Central Bank.\u202f<\/div>\n
\u201cI am confident that in the next two to three weeks we should resolve most of these challenges and as we resolve them a lot more confidence should come back into the system,\u201d Mr Hosi added.\u202f<\/div>\n
We\u2019ve also had meeting with the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) jointly owned by CBOD and the Association of Bankers to develop de-risking mechanisms in the petroleum financing sector\u2026 and we\u2019re making substantial progress.\u201d\u202f<\/div>\n
Ghana\u2019s trading currency, the cedi has depreciated by 22 per cent against the dollar this year, while inflation also jumped to 27.6 per cent in May – the highest level in more than 18 years – all contributing to the forex challenges.\u202f<\/div>\n
Meanwhile, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, the Minister of Finance, has given the assurance that the Government was committed to implementing measures to address the persistent depreciation of the Ghana cedi against its major trading partners.\u202f<\/div>\n
He said that: \u201cThe implementation of the 30 per cent cut in expenditures and other expenditure measures approved by Cabinet are all helping to reduce the fiscal deficit and thereby reduce the pressures on the exchange rate.\u201d\u202f<\/div>\n
He added that the Government was also arranging to raise about $1 billion to support the 2022 Budget and foreign exchange reserves, which was expected to improve the supply of the foreign currency and stabilise the Cedi.\u202f<\/div>\n
The Minister said this when he responded to a question posed to him in Parliament by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bongo Constituency, Mr Edward Abambire Bawa on Wednesday.\u202f<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Accra, June 24, GNA – Some Bulk Oil Distributing Companies (BDCs) are going to the unregulated forex market (black market) to shore up dollar requirement to import oil into the country. This is because the Bank of Ghana and the Commercial Banks are unable to meet the dollar supply, leaving a gap of USD350 to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[17720,94,6029,446,592,18799,18800],"class_list":["post-1133193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-business","tag-bdcs","tag-black","tag-forex","tag-market","tag-pushes","tag-shortfall","tag-usd350m"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1133193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1133193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1133193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1133193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}