The Bank of Ghana has assured that it is taking measures to improve market conduct and instill sanity in the market for foreign exchange.

To this end, it has worked with the Ghana Association of Banks to streamline documentation requirements for foreign payments to minimise the incentives to resort to informal markets.

This is coming after the cedi faced severe pressures against the major foreign currencies.

“To deal with the high demand pressures on the foreign exchange market, the Bank has taken steps in the past few weeks to directly absorb foreign exchange needs of some corporate institutions, and this has led to a reduced pipeline demand for foreign exchange from the commercial banks”, it disclosed in its Monetary Policy report.

“The Bank is fully aware of the operations of illegal operators in the foreign exchange market and is working with the Financial Intelligence Centre to sanitise the foreign exchange market”, it added.

It continued that it will step up foreign exchange bureaux monitoring to ensure compliance with their regulatory framework.

In line with this, the Bank of Ghana directed all foreign exchange bureaus advertising rates outside their premises and on social media platforms to stop immediately.

The Bank has also set up a task force to monitor all the foreign exchange bureaux to ensure compliance, adding “The foreign exchange market is also affected by sentiments and pronouncements made in this election year and we urge all to manage pronouncements which weakens confidence in the local economy”.