Flagbearer of the All People’s Congress (APC), Dr. Hassan Ayariga, has called on the government to nationalize all mines and ban the use of dollars for transactions in the country.

According to him, this is the solution to strengthening the cedi against the dollar and rescuing the country from the economic crisis.

He noted that the country’s overreliance on the dollar as a store of value and a means of transaction is what has contributed to the weakening of the cedi over the past few months.

He added that should government ban dollar transactions and encourage people to use gold as a store of value rather than the dollar, it would boost the cedi immensely and put a final stop to Ghana’s ritual visit to the IMF.

“If it is the dollar we want to stock, let’s do it this way. Let’s begin to stock gold. If we begin to buy gold and stock gold, I am sure anytime we want to sell the gold, we’ll have value for our money. If it is the value that we are afraid that the Ghana cedi will be devalued and for that matter we want to stock this dollar, government should ban all people from doing galamseys, government should begin to be the only sole institution that will mine gold.

“And when government begins to mine gold, government should keep gold as reserve, and when we keep gold as reserve we’ll not need to go to IMF to borrow money. The difficulties we’re facing now will be a thing of the past.

“So for me the easier thing, ban transactions in dollars in this country, ban the quotation of properties in dollars, selling of property in dollar, let’s begin to use the Ghana cedi to do everything we want to do and Ghana government should ban galamsey and let only the nation mine and I’m sure things will be better for us,” he said.