The government has been charged with neglecting to implement steps to address the rapid depreciation of the Ghana cedi versus the US dollar, according to Prof. John Gatsi, Dean of the University of Cape Coast Business School (UCCBS).
Prof. John Gatsi said that the government’s stance does not show that the country is in crisis in an interview with Starr News.
“Since the problem is supply and demand, you have used up what are known as the short-term solutions and you lack the resources for the next step.
However, there are other things you may do that will send out good signals, but we are not.
“In fact, in the past two weeks we have not been behaving like we are in a crisis,” the Dean of UCCBS stated.
Touching on the discussions on an IMF-supported program, John Gatsi advised the government to be open on how it is handling the debt restructuring with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“If you have sent a five-member committee to collect facts for debt management strategy, the debt management strategy by the Financial Management Act is the job of the Finance Minister and his team. If in their opinion they are done and you cannot open up that you are doing debt restructuring then the approach is wrong.
“People will read different kinds of meaning. Especially on the back of during the Financial and Banking sector clean-up, people had their money locked up and at a point, the investment of citizens were forced into mutual funds against their will. There are people who cannot also access their locked-up funds up till today,” Mr. Gatsi stated.
He continued: “So if the government is going to be empowered to determine the sense of elongation then the citizens have to know the maturity period of their investment. As well as to also know whether they may be taxed on their principal or the interest. If you are hiding this and they get to know they will be reacting and that’s what the banks are experiencing”.