The Minority in Parliament has said that the Bank of Ghana’s response to their ‘Moment of Truth’ presser on the central bank’s 2022 loss does not address the serious issues raised.

According to the Minority, the statement put forth among others does not address the BoG’s printing of money for the government and the writing off the GH₵‎48 million debt government owed the central bank.

A press release dated August 11, signed by the Minority Leader noted “as a matter of fact, the Bank of Ghana’s unsigned press statement is full of deliberate distortions and flimsy justifications.”

On the printing of money for the government, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson stated that BoG could not offer any “reasonable” justification for printing GH₵‎35 billion in 2021 and GH₵‎42 billion in 2022 to finance the government.

He stated that this evidently breach the law since the amount printed for the government far exceeds the legally acceptable threshold of 5% of the previous fiscal years’ total revenue.

Dr Forson indicated that “indeed, the facts show that BOG acted as law unto itself by willfully engaging in the illegal printing of monies to finance the recklessness of the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia/NPP government
both in 2021 and 2022."

This illegal conduct of the Governor of BOG constitutes a criminal offence under section 67 of the Bank of Ghana Act and cannot be wished away by the flimsy justifications mounted by the Bank in the multiple press statements they have issued in the last couple of days.”

He added that it was also illegal for the BoG to write off about GH₵‎48 billion of government debt owed to the central bank without parliamentary approval.

The Minority Leader noted that the government’s declaration of its intent to engage in a domestic bet restructuring during the 2023 budget reading - based on which the BoG wrote off the debt - does not constitute approval from the House.

The central bank’s action, he stated, is a breach of section 53 of the Public Financial Management Act, 2016.

“We wish to state unequivocally for the records, that at no point has the Finance Minister presented a report to Parliament informing the house of the attainment of the 5% borrowing threshold or the setting of a new limit of government borrowing as required by section 30 of the Bank of Ghana Act.”

“Nor has the Finance Minister sought the approval of Parliament for BOG to write-off any public funds, as required by section 53 of Public Financial Management Act 2016 (Act, 918)," Dr Forson added.

This comes after the Bank of Ghana revealed on Wednesday that GH₵53.1 billion of the total loss of GH₵60 billion occurred as a result of the government’s Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP).

According to a statement from the Bank, BoG stepped in to arrest a major economic and social crisis since the domestic auction was failing.

Read more: GH₵53.1bn of GH₵60bn loss was a direct result of DDEP – BoG

However, the Minority in Parliament is insisting that the BoG immediately reinstate the illegally written-off liability of the government “and stop the baseless justifications they are mounting.”

Read more: 2022 was the peak of economic and social crisis – BoG

“The managers of the Bank of Ghana must recognise that the economic difficulties it alludes to in its statement of 9th August, 2023 are all self-inflicted and cannot be a reasonable justification for the palpable illegalities they have engaged in and the unprecedented mess they have created.”

Read the full statement below: