Dollar hits four cedis

The dollar is now selling a little over 4 Ghana cedis at some of the big banks in the country.

Checks by JOYBUSINESS indicate that some of the commercial banks have been selling a dollar at around 4 Ghana cedis, 01 pesewas since Tuesday.

Some of the forex bureaus as at last week were even selling a dollar for a little more than 4 Ghana cedis.

Barclays and Standard Chartered Bank had earlier predicted that, the Ghana cedis will cross the 4 cedi mark before the end of this year.

Currency analyst Derick Mensah says the situation calls for some drastic measures by government to halt the local currency’s depreciation.

"It can turn worse looking the numbers that came through from our last MPC meeting you will realise that the reserve position at the Central Bank is not strong enough.

He said government can also raise euro bonds to boost the local currency.

Government earlier this year indicated that, the first tranche of IMF bail-out funds, which hit bank of Ghana’s account in April should help halt the cedi’s depreciation.

However that did not happen even though the rate of the cedi’s depreciation halted a bit staying around 3 Ghana cedis 85 pesewas.