The Minority in Parliament has taken a swipe at the Bank of Ghana for recording a Ghc60 billion loss.
The Caucus believes this shows that the central bank is not fit for purpose.
In response to the Finance Minister’s presentation of the mid-year budget review to Parliament, the Ranking Member on the Finance Committee, Isaac Adongo, stated that, contrary to claims that the economy was stabilising, the opposite was true.
The Annual report of the Bank of Ghana has revealed that the central bank recorded a loss of 60.8 Billion Ghana cedis for 2022.
The 2022 Financial Accounts explained that the loss can be attributed to decline in the Group’s net worth position due to the impact of the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) and impairment of some assets of the Group.
According to the report, “the total liabilities of Bank of Ghana and its subsidiaries exceeded its total assets by GH¢54.52 billion”. In 2021, the Bank recorded a surplus of 5.72 billion Ghana cedis .
Reacting to this, Mr. Adongo said “All the monies in our banks that they forced them to save with the Bank of Ghana, which we call the Prudential Reserve, have gone to waste. All the monies that they have been borrowing from abroad in foreign currency to support the Cedi are gone and as a matter of fact, if you even take away government debt that they have incurred GH¢48 billion, you will still see that the Bank of Ghana has a hole of GH¢22 billion. What this means is that the Bank is not fit for purpose because it cannot undertake monetary policies without printing money because it doesn’t have money.”
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
