Post domestic debt exchange programme, the former director general of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Dr. Adu Anane-Antwi, believes that a lot more Ghanaians will resort to saving outside financial institutions.

According to him, the domestic debt exchange programme has significantly eroded the confidence Ghanaians had in the financial sector, particularly in government securities as a safe investment choice.

He noted that in search of a new investment option safe from cedi depreciations and sudden government policies, a lot more Ghanaians are likely to buy and hoard foreign currencies particularly the dollar, pounds sterling and the euro to store their wealth.

“After what people have gone through, when they get their principal back, they might not invest in no securities at all. And many of them are targeting buying hard dollars or currency and keeping it. And when the rates go up they’ll just go sell part of it for their daily expenses,” he said on PM Express.

Dr. Anane-Antwi continued, “So post-DDEP people have started losing confidence in financial securities and therefore they won’t be surprised if after this you see a lot of people even though it will not be on that scale at that level, but a lot of people going to change their small 1000 cedis, 10,000 cedis, 20,000 cedis into dollars or pounds or euro instead of using to buy either government securities or private securities.

“Because mind you, we have said that government securities are the safest in town. So if the safest has also become unsafe, then nobody will rely on the private ones the banks are issuing.

“So people are now thinking about saving their money, investing their money outside the financial system. And that is the confidence I’ve been talking about, now people don’t have confidence in the market, so let me put in dollars. So there’ll be pressure on the cedi. People will be taking their proceeds from their bonds and will be using it to buy dollars or pound sterling or euro as an investment.”