CJA Dissatisfied With Re-denomination

The Committee for Joint Action (CJA) has strongly condemned the move by the Kufuor administration to re-denominate the cedi.

It has also questioned why it took the government so long before initiating such an action.

At a news conference in Accra on Wednesday, the National Youth Organiser of the People's National Convention (PNC), Mr Benard Mornah, stated that the timing of the re-denomination exercise was of great concern to the CJA because according to him, the Bank of Ghana had announced that Ghana was to join the Eco currency zone in 2009. Thus there was absolutely no need for the re-denomination of the cedi.

“Indeed, we are unable to understand the rush to re-denominate the cedi and the huge expenditure in printing new currency notes only to use the Eco in a matter of only two years,” he said.

He said the NPP government was trying very hard to turn this purely administrative economic measure into a huge propaganda blitz “bordering on a deliberate lie”.

Mr Mornah labelled as false President Kufuor's claim at the recent NPP conference in Koforidua that the prudent management of the economy and the rate of the cedi's appreciation would ensure that the cedi would be exchanged for the dollar in July, this year, at the rate of one to one.

“This claim is false because what will exchange with the dollar at a rate of one to one is not the cedi currently in circulation but a new Ghana Cedi to be introduced in July this year,” he added.

He also took a swipe at the Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr Paul Acquah, for his failure to provide Parliament with an estimate how much it would cost to print and circulate the new currency and the cost involved in educating Ghanaians on the proposed re-denomination exercise adding “he also failed to explain why such a major policy issue had not been captured in the 2007 budget presented to Parliament by the finance minister in November 2006.”

According to him, the CJA was convinced that the Kufuor administration was resorting to such cheap propagandist enterprises since it had failed to keep faith with Ghanaians as far as its 2000 campaign promises were concerned.

The Publicity Chairman of the Convention People's Party (CPP), who is also the Managing Editor of The Insight newspaper, Mr Kwesi Pratt Jnr, said knocking off the zeros from the cedi without addressing the essential issues of development was self-deception.

He mentioned, for example, that the collapse of some industries in Ghana like the cotton and textile industries and the importation of basic products such as toothpicks and handkerchiefs were factors that also contributed to the economic woes of Ghana.

He said if the purpose of the re-denomination was to make the handling of the cedi portable, then it was needless for the BoG to advocate the need for other means to handle fewer cedi notes such as the use of visa and ATM cards.