{"id":1230407,"date":"2022-10-21T07:58:45","date_gmt":"2022-10-21T07:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/10\/21\/government-to-set-fixed-exchange-rate-system-at-ports-for-3-months-to-help-importers\/"},"modified":"2022-10-21T07:58:45","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T07:58:45","slug":"government-to-set-fixed-exchange-rate-system-at-ports-for-3-months-to-help-importers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/10\/21\/government-to-set-fixed-exchange-rate-system-at-ports-for-3-months-to-help-importers\/","title":{"rendered":"Government to set fixed exchange rate system at ports for 3 months to help importers"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry, Michael Okyere Baafi has assured that government will set a fixed exchange rate at the ports for the next three months to cushion traders who import goods into the country.<\/p>\n

By this, the Ghana Revenue Authority will maintain a dollar rate for traders as the same level as the Bank of Ghana\u2019s interbank rate.<\/p>\n

The minister disclosed that the decision was reached after members of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) went on a strike and closed their shops over high cost of doing business at the ports.<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernment is not against traders. We want to make them very comfortable in business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Baafi spoke during the signing ceremony of the sectorial expansion of the COVID-19 response grant programme.<\/p>\n

He explained that, fixing the exchange rate for long period at the Bank of Ghana rate will give traders some financial space to plan for the future.<\/p>\n

He added that the move will also stabilize prices on the market and keep inflation in check for a long time.<\/p>\n

Cedi performance<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Ghana cedi continued its free fall, losing value twice within a day to sell at \u00a214.50 to one US dollar.<\/p>\n

This translated to 5.45% depreciation in a day and 17.5% in four days of the week.<\/p>\n

It began the day at \u00a213.75 to the American \u2018greenback\u2019 but declined in value further to \u00a214.50, according to quotations by the forex bureaus.<\/p>\n

In nominal terms, the cedi has lost about 135% value to the world\u2019s most important currency.<\/p>\n

In real terms, the local currency has depreciated by about 55% to the dollar.<\/p>\n

The fixed exchange rate is expected to provide better certainty for importers and help the government maintain low inflation.<\/p>\n

The dollar is currently trading for over GH\u00a213 to the dollar, a situation the traders have lamented that is negatively affecting their businesses as it balloons the cost of importation and erodes their capital.<\/p>\n

The cedi has depreciated significantly in recent months and at the beginning of the week, the cedi was noted as the world\u2019s worst-performing currency.<\/p>\n

That took its losses this year to more than 45 percent.<\/p>\n

The forex challenges prompted the protest by traders, who planned to lock their shops for six days.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry, Michael Okyere Baafi has assured that government will set a fixed exchange rate at the ports for the next three months to cushion traders who import goods into the country. By this, the Ghana Revenue Authority will maintain a dollar rate for traders as the same level as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1230409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[1418,6423,1090,204,1705,4343,179,618,1493],"class_list":["post-1230407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-exchange","tag-fixed","tag-government","tag-importers","tag-months","tag-ports","tag-rate","tag-set","tag-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230407","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=1230407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1230407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1230407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1230407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}