Cedi back to where it belongs after 16% plunge – BoG
April 17, 2019
Ghana’s cedi has recovered to levels that appropriately reflect the state of the economy after “overshooting” during a slump in the first quarter, according to the head of the central bank.
The currency of West Africa’s second-biggest economy collapsed as much as 16 per cent against the dollar after offshore holders of domestic debt failed to roll back their maturing investments at the same time as when the central bank was building reserves to meet targets under a programme of the International Monetary Fund. The cedi pared its year-to-date losses to 6.4 per cent, trading at 5.2513 against the greenback by the close in Accra on Thursday.
“We think that is probably where the fundamentals would say it should be,” Bank of Ghana Governor Ernest Addison said in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg Television in Washington. “The key thing to recognise is that the exchange rate will reflect the fundamentals of the Ghanaian economy, and we believe that the fundamentals are at the appropriate places.”