Cedi depreciation due to government recklessness, dollarisation won't solve it — ASEPA

The Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA) has refuted claims that adopting the US dollar could help stabilise Ghana's struggling economy.

The think tank argued the depreciation of the cedi is largely due to mismanagement and reckless borrowing by the government.

In an interview with Accra-based Citi TV, ASEPA Executive Director Mensah Thompson disagreed with the Institute of Economic Affairs' proposal for Ghana to dollarise.

They believe Ghana's economic woes stem from the government's poor fiscal discipline and the finance minister's mismanagement rather than issues with the cedi itself.

“We are here not because our currency is not held in dollars, we are here because of the recklessness of Ken Ofori-Atta, the governor of the Central Bank and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. The root cause of our problem is recklessness, borrowing and people who just don’t understand simple economic management who implemented faze economic restructuring that has thrown the economy into a cyclic spiral now going back into a debt hole and the solution is not dollarisation," Mr. Thompson said.

He added, "I have always asked myself, why did the government, after all the recklessness of Ken Ofori-Atta, still decide that if they were going under a debt restructuring programme, Ken Ofori-Atta was the person they were going to allow to oversee that debt restructuring, I was surprised when he decided to restructure our domestic debt."