The Ghana International Trade & Finance Conference (GITFiC) has dismissed calls by the Ghana Union of Traders’ Associations (GUTA) for the government to fast-track its plans to trade in the Chinese Yuan instead of the US dollars.
GUTA’s call comes on the back of the sharp depreciation of the domestic currency – Cedi.
But in a statement on Thursday, March 10, GITFiC said “such a call is not in the right direction, it lacks merit, and it is without any Economic-Scientific basis”.
“We believe what GUTA meant, in the Economic and International Trade sense, was a Bilateral Swap Agreement (BSA),” it guessed.
“However, this call, at this particular period, is not feasible and cannot apply to Ghana. The time for cheap talks should be shelved.”
GITFiC cited how a bilateral currency swap agreement between China and South Africa yielded no results as the US dollar eventually reigned supreme.
“Egypt has also tried the same and has amounted to nothing. The issue of the US dollar goes beyond just import and export.”
GITFiC insists that the Bank of Ghana should ignore the “noise”, describing it as “baseless, uninformed, unscientific, and a mere talk-talk”.
“The Chinese Yuan is already trading on the Ghanaian Forex space,” it observed. “Traders can buy the Yuan with cedis and proceed to trade in China and vice versa.”
“We call on all well-meaning Ghanaian citizens and the entire business community to trust in Ghana’s current Economic Management Team (EMT).
“Their abilities and capabilities are solid and are very much able to handle the down-turn of the US dollar-GHS and bring it back to its past glory in the coming months. It will get worse before it gets better.”
