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The Director-General of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Dr. Kodjo Esseim Mensah-Abrampa, has revealed that the fall in the Ghana cedi has a short-term implication but needs a long, medium, and short term policies and responses to tackle the challenges.

Speaking to the press at the launch of the Long-term National Development Perspective Framework (LTNDPF), Dr. Kodjo Esseim Mensah-Abrampa stated that the Ghana cedi’s continuous decline is a result of a number of key factors, which have been addressed in the Vision 2057 framework, launched by the commission on Tuesday, May 28, 2024, at the Cedi Conference Centre of the University of Ghana, Legon.

He said, “the depreciation of the Ghana cedi has a lot of short-term implications but you need a long term, medium and short term policies and responses to tackle it. It is a short–term phenomenal which we are experiencing now but it requires a long term proves to stabilise the currency. If you look at the long term plan, the first economic activity is to stabilise the economy. The stabilisation of the economy also implies the stabilisation of our currency.”

The Director-General of NDPC outlined a number of factors which contributes to the depreciation of the Ghana cedi against the major trading currencies.

According to him, every currency is backed by two indicators; the production and reserves, adding that, if the reserve is low, the currency suffers fluctuation and depreciation.

“If your reserve is low, your currency suffers fluctuation and depreciation. If productivity is low, your currency also suffers. In the plan, we have tackled the two angles, looking at the resources around us, how do we mobilise these resources. We are number one (1) in gold production and seven (7) in the world. We are number one in bauxite production in West Africa and the only country that have juxtaposition iron and manganese used to produce steel. What are we doing with these resources?”

According to the Dr. Mensah-Abrampa, the only way the natural resources can be harnessed is to first of all, train the human resources in the areas that need their expertise.

He posited that, although the government through the Ministry of Education have been championing the cause of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education, so many students are rather moving towards the liberal courses which has created an imbalance in what they industry players lead.

“It is a matter of harnessing the human resources, first and foremost, through the human resources. What have we been training our people on? Definitely, there is a divergence from the very resources that we have. If we don’t have people with the skill and the knowledge to take advantage of the resources, then we will continue to be in the problem that we are facing,” he said.

He continued to add that, one way we can deal with the issue of the free fall of the cedi is to move from primary production to secondary production.

According to him, the rate of production of the raw materials have been very low, especially with the discovery of the raw materials like the cocoa, bauxite, manganese, lithium, oil, etc.

“So many years, we have been producing cocoa and yet we export the bulk of it without any value added. We are producing a lot of gold and we have been doing that for ages, and we are still struggling to have an economic refinery top process them to produce jewelry, to produce all the ornaments that come from it.

“These are the key situations but for the last four years a lot of processes have been made towards moving to processing. We are pushing and working on the minerals resources and you will see a lot of work being done by the minerals commission to be able to take advantage of the gold and move it to the refinery level, where you can have the whole chain benefit from it.”