Isaac Yaw Boamah-Nyarko, a member of Parliament’s Finance Committee, is urging the government to pay more attention to building up its foreign reserves. This is important to keep the cedi, Ghana's currency, stable.
During a talk on PM Express on JoyNews, Mr. Boamah-Nyarko warned that Ghana shouldn’t just celebrate short-term successes with its money. Instead, the country needs to think ahead and make plans for a strong economy in the future.
“We get excited when things are going well, but we often forget to make smart plans for the long run,” he said.
Mr. Boamah-Nyarko mentioned that Parliament will be asking the Finance Minister to share the government’s plan for keeping the cedi strong.
“We’re going back to Parliament tomorrow to ask the Minister of Finance how the government plans to keep these gains and build up our savings for tough times,” he explained.
He also talked about how Ghana is managing its gold reserves. He pointed out that the country is selling a lot of gold but not replacing it fast enough.
“At the end of December, we had 30 tons of gold. Now, just five months later, we’ve sold almost 20 tons, but we’ve added less than 1 ton back,” he said sadly.
Mr. Boamah-Nyarko reminded everyone that Ghana’s weaknesses were clear during the COVID-19 pandemic. He warned that the country shouldn’t rely too much on high prices for things like gold and cocoa.
“We can’t expect these high prices to last forever,” he cautioned.
He wants the Vice President, who leads the Economic Management Team, to give clear answers to Ghanaians about how they plan to keep the cedi strong and build up foreign reserves.
“We want the Vice President to assure us that these good times won’t just be a short-lived surprise,” he emphasized.
Mr. Boamah-Nyarko also pointed out that other countries have much larger reserves. “The US has over 8,000 tons of gold, and the UK has over 2,000 tons,” he noted.
He warned that if Ghana doesn’t take action now, it could be in trouble when global prices start to drop.
“If we keep going like this, how much reserve will we have by the end of the year?” he asked, raising an important question for everyone to think about.