The head of the Economic Management Team and the vice president of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has come under fire from the country’s current economic reality, according to minority leader Dr. Cassiel Ato Baah Forson.
Dr. Ato Forson claims that despite the Vice President’s highly regarded qualifications prior to the NPP taking office, Ghanaians had high expectations of the “Economic Whizkid” and were instead greeted with a collapsing economy after he assumed office.
Dr. Ato Forson bemoaned the effects of the weaker cedi on the economy during a news conference in Parliament on Wednesday, May 15, 2024, and urged the government to step up.
He expressed shock at the economy’s failure to improve despite significant foreign exchange inflows from the IMF and the World Bank. He criticized the government’s management of the cedi and the Economic Management Team chaired by Vice President Alhaji Bawumia. He stated that the current state of the Ghanaian economy has damaged Bawumia’s credibility.
pricing for products and services have increased as a result of the sharp depreciation of the cedi, since many companies are raising their rates. He said, “This development would make the already miserable situation of Ghanaians much worse.
The scenario is “even more frightening and distressing to observe regular media reports of soaring costs of products and services as a result of traders’ inability to service their loans and restock due to the quick decline of the Cedi,” according to Member of Parliament Ajumako Enyan Essiam.
He bemoaned how businesses, especially those dealing in imports, are suffering due to the cedi’s continuous fall.
“At this point, traders, especially importers, require more money to buy or import the same quantity of items that they could have previously purchased with less money. One can imagine the impact of this fall of the Cedi on businesses at Abossey Okai, Kokompe, Okaishie, Makola, Kejetia and other major business centres in the country,” he lamented.
The cedi was trading against the dollar at GH₵ 11.98 but is now hovering around GHC 14.80 at the forex bureaus, resulting in a depreciation rate of close to 20% since the beginning of the year.
