The Central Bank has indicated that from the beginning of the year to June 2023, it has built up US$1.0 billion in reserves.
According to the Bank of Ghana, this mainly came from the institution’s gold purchase programme, and settlement of short-term liabilities.
Gross International Reserves (excluding encumbered assets and petroleum funds) improved to US$2,353.95 million equivalent to 1.1 months of import cover, compared with US$1,440.0 million (0.6 months of import cover) recorded at the end of December 2022, the Bank announced in its Monetary Policy Committee Press Release dated 24th July, 2023
The Bank’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme was launched in June 2021 with
the key objective of shoring up the Bank of Ghana’s foreign reserves by purchasing
domestically produced gold and converting same into foreign assets (monetary gold).
Since the inception of the programme, a total of 7.73 tons of monetary gold, valued at
approximately US$480 million, has been added to reserves under the Gold for
Reserves programme, well ahead of the target of doubling the gold holdings in 5
years.
Exchange market
The foreign exchange market has remained relatively stable for the first six months
of 2023, supported by positive market sentiments derived from the IMF disbursement
of the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) first tranche of US$600 million, forex purchases from the mining and oil sectors, and weakened demand.
The Ghana cedi depreciated by 20.6 percent against the US dollar in January 2023 and has remained generally stable since then with a cumulative depreciation of 1.8 percent between February and June 2023.