Gideon Boako writes on Cedi Performance  and the underpinning Bawumia Formula

Like the typical NDC, our GoldBod CEO, Sammy Gyamfi, is failing to appreciate the issues and show gratitude for implementing the Bawumia Formula. They steal your ideas and insult you on top of it!

1. First, why are we all celebrating a stronger cedi today?
2. ?It is because it keeps all other prices low and stable. The fall of the cedi has, historically, been at the heart of most of our economic woes, inflation, high interest rates, unemployment, etc? Solve it, and Ghana can succeed!
3. Yesterday, the Finance Minister attributed the cedi’s strong performance to the NPP’s Gold for Forex initiative! Well, he said the programme of the GoldBod to buy and sell gold. Yes, Gold4Forex!

 

3. ?But, how did it all begin? Whose idea was it to leverage our gold to stabilise our currency, the cedi?
4. ?It was Bawumia! He found a solution to the problem that the country had battled with since the 1960s without success, cedi depreciation.
5. ?It was Bawumia who realised that we can use our own gold to protect our local currency and he started on two fronts:

(a) by doing what no government had done before, building up Ghana’s gold reserves heavily and

(b) by selling gold to tackle a forex problem for buying the one commodity that affects the price of everything, petrol/diesel, with the Gold for Oil initiative. Remember that G4O was a pilot scheme.

 

6. ?The experiment worked, with the Central Bank accumulating gold reserves and releasing cedis for PMMC to buy gold for forex. Indeed, BoG used gold for forex (G4FX) for several items, including drugs, legitimate repatriation of profits for multinationals, eg, $211m for MTN stuck here for years.
7. ?Bawumia promised in 2024 to institutionalise Gold for Forex to make it the main basic anchor for cedi’s stability.
8. ?He laid out his plans in the NPP’s 2024 Manifesto. The NDC read it. Liked it.
9. ?He did not win, but the NDC which won saw wisdom in it and, with the GoldBod, has made G4FX their only known key policy! Not even 24 Hour Economy has happened!
10. ?But, when Bawumia started this G4FX agenda, the NDC called him all sorts of names. They said it could not yield any results.  They even described it as corrupt! But Bawumia believed in his ideas, and he had the support of his boss, President Akufo-Addo, to pursue the plan. Today, we are here because of Bawumia’s brains, his vision, and his ability to find solutions to Ghana’s problems.

 

9. ?*Today, not only NDC, all gold producing economies in Africa, including Namibia and Burkina Faso, are using the Bawumia Gold Formula to achieve macroeconomic stability and protect their economies.*
10. ?But, is the Mahama government going about it the right way? We doubt it. We are worried.
11. ?The aim of Bawumia and the NPP was to build both gold and gross international reserves to appreciable levels before seeking to inject dollars into the economy as a measure to contain depreciation.
12. ?The NDC has neglected building up our gold reserves since January and only focusing on buying gold for forex. This imbalance will cost us dearly if not fixed quickly.

 

13. ?You cannot continue injecting dollars without addressing the structural defects that keep the local currency on the depreciating path.
14. ?Gold for Forex is one thing, but where is the industrialisation policy too?

 

15. ?If today’s quantum of reserves had not been built by the previous government, there is no way the current government could pump such a huge amount of dollars into the market to contain the depreciation.
16. ?If the NPP government had not thought about the future, the cedi would have been suffering today. Mahama should think about the future like we did, start again to build higher gold reserves, and let’s see his industrialisation programme as well.
17. ?For now, please thank Bawumia and the NPP for bringing the idea of using our gold to stabilise our cedi. Don’t be ungrateful.

Ghana succeeds for all of us.Shalom.

Editor’s note: Views expressed in this article do not represent that of The Chronicle

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