Minister of Finance, Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam has slammed the Ranking Member on Parliament’s Finance Committee and Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central Constituency in the Upper East Region, Hon. Isaac Adongo for inciting people to go and buy dollars to run their businesses.
He said Isaac Adongo’s comment is not healthy to build the economy at the time the cedi is depreciating against the dollar.
“The problem with the cedi can also be largely attributed to speculations and therefore while we will be making efforts to make market sentiment positive, we also know that some other people are inciting speculation. We have had intelligence that people have been deliberately inciting speculations but we never got it real as we saw two or three days ago. When my good friend and my brother went out there urging people to buy dollars to do their businesses.” He said.
“And this was after I indicated at the Town Hall meeting at London with all the policies we are implementing with the flows that we are expecting from external sources and with the completion of our debt restructuring with our bilateral official creditors as well as our Euro Bond holders, we saw the cedi becoming stronger, and stronger, my brother went out there to say people should ignore Amin Adam and go out there ad buy dollars to do their businesses.” Dr. Amin Adam.
“I think that this is not healthy for our economy. We all need to work together, whether you are with the government or with the minority because we are all stakeholders in this economy. We have a duty to our people to ensure that the economy is stronger for the benefit of all. And so my friends on the minority side, I want to appeal to you to stop inciting speculation and work with us, give us constructive criticism, give us ideas so you are already pursuing so we can provide the direction our people are expecting from us.” The Minister indicated.
What Hon.Isaac Adongo said:
“The IMF programme is saying that all the monies they are giving us, includinng the World Bank, the dollars should be kept in our reserves, the reason is that when payment starts, we will need the dollars to pay. So they are protecting the repayment of the fund in foreign currency, so no cedi of the IMF World Bank money will be used to intervene in our markets else we will violate and breach the IMF agreement.”
“And the principle behind that is simple, by the time you will be repaying, you will be repaying in dollars so we have to make sure that you have enough dollars to repay, so please if you have to run your business and you need dollars just go ahead and buy them. Don’t listen to Mohammed Amin saying that we should watch the dollar next week.”
Source: Elvisanokyenews.com
