Economist, Courage Kingsley Martey is of the great conviction that, the Ghana Cedi will remain stable when compared to other countries on the African continent regardless the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking to Citinews monitored by Talksafrica.com, he attributed the strong performance of the Cedi relative to its peers on the continent, to Ghana’s diverse export base amongst other factors.
Out of some 15 key currencies on the continent evaluated by Databank, the Cedi remained relatively stable going down by only negative 2.86 percent from January 2020 till now, unlike other currencies.
“You would realize that when you compare our export diversification relative to our peers, we appear to be a bit more diversified. Look at Nigeria and Angola for instance and you would realize that about 90% of their FX earnings come from crude oil alone, but when you come to Ghana our highest concentration of about 40 % is in gold which is faring well nowadays and bringing in additional windfall.”
“The other thing that has helped the Cedi perform very well this year is the by-weekly FX forward auctions that the Central Bank has been conducting”, he added.
Speaking on the strength of the Cedi for the rest of the year, Courage Kingsley Martey revealed that it will be stable despite the upcoming election season and the Christmas season.
“Hopefully, by the end of the year, even before COCOBOD comes in with the $1.3 billion syndicated loan facility, the Cedi should generally be stable,” he said
The Zambian Kwacha and the Nigerian Naira during the same period (January – September) experienced the biggest weakening amongst all the currencies dropping by 29% and 19% respectively, while the West African CFA Franc performed the strongest appreciating by almost 6 percent against the dollar.
TalkS Africa 