The Bank of Ghana has indicated it would review some of the recent foreign exchange measures it introduced to halt the free fall of the cedi against major trading currencies.
The banks says the review will focus especially on those that are badly affecting businesses.
But Joy Business gathers that the current banking laws requires the governor to review these directives after three months. The central bank introduced the directives in February this year.
The Bank of Ghana introduced the measures with the aim of stabilising the Ghana cedi which lost about 5% of its value to the United States dollar.
However a source close to the Bank says the review would not affect all the directives, but just those that have brought some hardship to enterprises.
As part of the directives to halt the ceid, the central bank also directed that all transactions in the country should be conducted in Ghana cedis in compliance with Bank of Ghana Notice dated October 10, 2012.
The central bank also revised rules governing the operations of Foreign Exchange Accounts (FEA) and Foreign Currency Accounts (FCA) with effect from February 5, 2014.
A major headache for businesses in the wake of the Bank of Ghana rules was the directive barring business from withdrawing more than $10,000.00 over the counter — unless such withdrawals were for travel purposes.
Meanwhile, Bank of Ghana Governor Henry Kofi Wampah said the central bank’s strong intervention to shoreup the cedi is beginning to bear fruit, with the currency’s rate of fall slowing from January’s alarming peak.
“The depreciation has reduced considerably to about 1 per cent according to our analysis – that is, if you are looking at three weeks after they were announced to now; because, as you know, the measures need time to be effective,” he told The Business and Financial Times newspaper..