The spokesperson to the Vice President, Dr. Gideon Boako, has defended Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s assertion that the Akufo-Addo administration had arrested the depreciation of the cedi against major currencies.
Speaking on The Point of View on Citi TV, Dr. Boako said the claim was valid back in the Akufo-Addo administration’s first term, the management of the cedi was better than the Mahama administration.
“The context in which the Vice President Spoke at the time was not wrong,” he maintained.
“Basically he [Bawumia] was talking about the rate of deprecation… definitely, if any economist is making a comment, it was right for the economist to say that the speed at which the currency depreciates has slowed down,” Dr. Boako said.
“So if he [Bawumia] says we have arrested the rate of depreciation at the time, the evidence and data at the time supported that… so that was a factual statement to make. But as to whether or not you are able to hold on to that is something else,” he added.
Dr. Boako also said the statement “passed the test of truth.”
“The fact that he made a statement that is factual is factual. That is data. If you are speaking to data, you speak to data,” he said.
The last year has seen the dollar lose more ground to the dollar at alarming rates.
Data from the Bank of Ghana show that, the cedi depreciated by about 14.6% to the US dollar within the first quarter of 2022, while Bloomberg described the Ghana cedi as the worst-performing currency on the global market.
Dr. Bawumia has blamed the woes of the cedi largely on negative credit ratings, challenges in getting the 2022 budget passed, and the refusal of investors to roll over their monies in Ghana’s economy among others.
