The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GNCCI), Mark Badu-Aboagye, has raised concerns over the potential impact of a long-term plan to address the Cedi’s depreciation on local businesses.
Badu Aboagye emphasised the urgent need for the government to implement short-term measures to halt the rapid decline of the local currency.
He warned that without immediate intervention, many businesses could collapse before any long-term solutions take effect.
The Deputy Minister for Finance, Dr Stephen Amoah, stated in an interview on May 30, that the flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, will draft a long-term national framework that will fight and reverse the Cedi’s sharp depreciation against the US dollar if he is elected president.
“We are doing our best to stabilise the Cedi, which I said is a short-term approach, but we need a long-term approach to resolve the issue through a framework, and then I proposed that to achieve that, we will design a long-term approach when Dr Mahamudu Bawumia is elected president.”
But Mr Badu-Aboagye in an interview with Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show, cautioned against relying solely on long-term plans, stressing the immediate needs of businesses.
“For a business, we need to survive in the short term before we talk about the long term. Fine, the minister said that Bawumia will come out with a longer-term structure. That is fine but by the time he comes back with that long-term structure, I bet you a lot of businesses would have collapsed,” he stated.
He also highlighted challenges in Ghana’s competitiveness in the international market, questioning the viability of the country’s export strategy.
“We keep saying that we want to structure our economy and export more. The question we should ask is what are we exporting? Are we competitive in the international market?
“If we take our product to the international market, will somebody choose our product against the one coming from our another country with high quality and low price?
“… It is extremely difficult to produce in this country. So, people will produce and would not be able to sell on the international market and he will not be able to get the foreign exchange into this country,” he stated.
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