Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has urged Ghanaians to salute and give particular recognition to the Bank of Ghana, which has come under unfair criticism for taking the necessary measures to help pull the economy back from the brink of collapse.
According to him, the central bank provided needed financing to the government at that critical moment.
“What the Bank of Ghana did was very responsible, in putting the interest of the good citizens of Ghana first”, he disclosed when addressing the nation.
The Vice President also said the data available shows that the financing provided to government by the Bank of Ghana was temporary.
He stressed that the Bank of Ghana has provided zero financing to government in five out of the last seven years (2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2023),.
“The Bank of Ghana financing to government in the COVID-19 year of 2020 and liquidity crisis year of 2022 was because of a domestic and global crisis (underperforming domestic revenue and no access to international capital markets)”, he concluded.
We saved economy from collapsing – BoG
The Bank of Ghana has consistently justified its financing of the budget post Covid-19, saying, failure to do so will have spelled doom for the economy.
Before Covid-19 struck, the Central Bank between 2015 and 2020 had a policy of zero financing of the budget.
However, that changed right after Covid-19 when government was struggling to raise enough revenue.
Speaking at the University of Ghana 75th Anniversary Public Lecture on “Ghana’s Economic; The need for Paradigm Shift”, Director of Research at the Bank of Ghana, Dr Philip Abradu-Otoo said the Bank of Ghana had no choice but to save the economy from collapsing.
“So the Central Bank’s point of view, we realised we needed an economy to protect. So there were choices that had to be made, should we allow the economy to collapse or we should stick strictly to issues of fiscal dominance and then who picks up the pieces after the economy has collapsed”.
BoG records ¢60.8bn loss in 2022
The Bank of Ghana recorded ¢60.8 billion loss in 2022, its Annual Report and Financial Statements revealed.
The Central Bank’s record loss came after it posted a ¢1.2 billion profit in 2021.
According to the Annual Report and Financial Statements, the loss is attributed to a decline in the Group’s net worth position due to the impact of the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) and impairment of some assets.
Again, its total liabilities and subsidiaries exceeded its total assets by ¢54.52 billion.
In 2021, the Central Bank recorded a surplus of ¢5.72 billion.
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