A member of the economic management team of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Kofi Konadu Apraku has sharply criticized the Vice President for what he described as Mr Kwesi Amissah-Arthur’s lack of leadership in addressing the alarming depreciation of the cedi while he was governor of the Bank of Ghana. Dr. Apraku, who was responding to comments made by Mr Amissah-Arthur concerning the regulation of interest rates during his vetting in parliament Monday, said the former BoG governor failed to outline concrete steps to address the downgrading of the cedi as well as the high interest rates charged by banks. “For example, what did he say about interest rates? He said basically that we are in an unregulated era and that he cannot regulate the interest rates but we know the basic fundamentals that are working to create the high interest rates that we see.” “…With respect to depreciation, he gave only one example – the huge import volume – but there are very fundamental problems beside that. If you look at the agricultural sector, the performance over the period – last year, going at the rate of 0.08 percent and we know even food we are importing,” he stated. Dr. Apraku maintained that “people are not interested in the past; people are looking to solutions that he (veep) is going to proffer, that will help change the state of the economy.”