Member of the opposition New Patriotic Party’s Communications Team Johnson Ayine says the Mahama administration has resorted to injecting billions of dollars in forex to stabilize the local currency so as to score political points.
Speaking on News Digest on Dreamz FM on Friday, Ayine claimed the administration, since assuming power, has not achieved anything tangible managing the affairs of the country.
In order not to lose the goodwill and the confidence Ghanaians have reposed in it, Ayine said the Mahama administration has resorted to fiscal interventions to prop up the cedi.
“When we were told the finance minister or the Bank of Ghana was injecting another 1.4 billion dollars into the forex, I told a lot of people that they know what they were doing, because the government, as we speak for almost one year, the tangible achievements are not that there,” he stated.
“What they are relying on is ‘oh, the cedi is appreciating against the dollar, petroleum prices are down.”
The Ghanaian cedi, which had been on a free fall for close to a decade, made significant gains beginning the first quarter of this year and by May, was adjudged the world’s best-performing currency.
Although it depreciated in the third quarter of the year, it has accumulatively appreciated by 34.6 percent, 28 percent and 20.8 against the US dollar, British Pound and the euro respectively, the Finance Ministry indicated in the 2026 Budget Statement and Economic Policy.
Despite this, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had cautioned the government against direct fiscal intervention.
Presenting the budget statement last Thursday, Minister for Finance Cassiel Ato Forson said, “the Bank of Ghana’s strategic foreign exchange interventions, higher export earnings, and the moderation in import demand all worked together to preserve”.
But Johnson Ayine, the management of the cedi is both artificial and a political gimmick.
“So the best thing to do is to just close their ears from the advice from the IMF, World Bank, and citizens of this country, not to intervene in the forex. They have to close their ears and intervene so that they’ll be able to get a better message in the budget, which they succeeded doing”.
