Ban dollar accounts, let’s trade in cedis only – Ayariga to BoG

Founder of All People’s Congress (APC), Hassan Ayariga, has called on the Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr Ernest Addison to take a second look at the central bank’s decision to allow customers to operate dollar accounts in the country.

According to Mr Ayariga, the opening of dollar accounts has, over the years, contributed to the depreciation of the cedi against major currencies.

"Everybody who wants to do business outside the country must do it through the bank," he said.

"You can't open a dollar or euro account in the United Kingdom when their legal tender is the Pound sterling and these are measures to cushion the Pound sterling from a free-fall”, he noted.

“What is the rationale for having people operate dollar accounts when the legal tender is cedi?" he wondered.

Mr Ayariga made this call when he spoke on Accra100.5FM’s morning show, Ghana Yensom, hosted by Emmanuel Quarshie on Tuesday, September 6, 2022.

He said allowing people to operate dollar accounts coupled with the free-range black forex market, is part of the cedi’s problems, as well as the skyrocketing prices of goods in the country.

He argued that the black forex market, sometimes, creates an artificial scarcity of dollars in the system by hoarding the green buck.

"They do this to determine the value of the dollar against the cedis to profit from the system and yet BoG is not taking any actions against the perpetrators in the black market,” he bemoaned.