A senior fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Dr. Vladimir Antwi-Danso, has urged President John Dramani Mahama to implement strategies that will prevent the country from depending on the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Engaging the media, he emphasized that President Mahama must adopt bold and corrective measures if he hopes to leave a long-term legacy.

“The president has given indication that it is a legacy term. If it’s a legacy term then I suspect he must put things right so we don’t go back. It is a routine ritual, this is the 17th and there is no indication that this is going to be the end. It is because of the spending spree especially during election years,” he said.

He has advised the government to prioritize local production as a strategy to boost economic growth.

He warned that failure to adopt this approach could lead to further depreciation of the local currency in December.

Speaking at a press briefing in Accra on Tuesday, May 27, he noted that the appreciation of the Ghanaian cedi could be temporary.

“Our forex appreciating and the cedi also appreciating is not the answer; you must do more. You must try and be an export economy. That is the only way you stabilize your economy. That is the only way you make the other currency lower.

“What we are doing is that we are not stablising permanently. We will relapse. By December I believe that we will relapse. And this is coming from a technical point of view and not political. What I am saying is that it is not yet hurray,” he stated.

Meanwhile, President John Dramani Mahama has revealed that the cedi's continuous appreciation is having a positive impact on the government's efforts to settle its colossal debt.

Speaking at a high-level presidential session at the 60th Annual Meeting of the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the 51st Annual Meeting of the African Development Fund (ADF) in Abidjan, the President indicated that about GH₵150 billion has been slashed as a result of the local currency appreciating.

"Also, increasingly, one of the push factors for the debt is the value of the local currency; our debts continue to multiply because the cedi continues to grow weaker, and so we need more cedi because our public debt is stated in cedis, the weaker the cedi becomes against the foreign currencies, the higher it pushes up the debt."

"Fortunately, some measures we put in place have recently begun to show results, and the cedi has been strengthening, and so we have reduced our total debt over the last five months by almost 150 billion Ghana cedis," he noted.

In April and May this year, the local currency has appreciated by 19% as per information released by the Bank of Ghana (BoG).

As of Friday, May 26, the average interbank rates used by commercial banks for transactions at the close of business showed the US dollar buying at GH₵10.39 and selling at GH₵10.40.

The British pound is buying at GH₵14.09 and selling at GH₵14.11. The euro is currently being bought at GH₵11.82 and sold at GH₵11.83.