The Director of Legal Affairs for the opposition National Democracy Congress (NDC), Edudzi Tamakloe, has stated that the New Patriotic Party under President Akufo-Addo used the Eurobonds to cushion Ghana’s currency from depreciation from 2017 to 2021.
He said the government decided to use Eurobonds to give the Cedi an ‘artificial strength’ emphasising that the Cedi started depreciating. He stressed that Cedi started depreciating when the international markets were closed to the Ghanaian government.
“You will notice that when this administration came what they decided to do is to use the Eurobonds to create an artificial strength for the Ghana Cedi so by April 2017, they had gone in for the Franklin Templeton bond of $2.25 billion dollars.
“Then in 2018 up to 2021, within the space of five years, they had done 11 billion dollars of Eurobond,” said lawyer Edudzi Tameklo on The Big Issue segment on TV3 New Day on Monday, April 8.
According to Mr. Tamakloe, the government effectively used the bonds to support the Ghana Cedi without any critical input from the Economic Management Team (EMT) led by the Vice President Dr Bawumia.
“What effectively they were doing was to use the Eurobond to create an artificial strength. So effectively, the Ghana Cedi from 2017 to 2021 was given what they called a performance-enhancing drug. So, the Cedi was effectively on drugs,” he reiterated.
“Not because of the Economic Management Team, nothing. Consistently, they were doing two billion dollars averagely every year,” Mr. Tameklo emphasised.
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He further noted that the Cedi started depreciating when the rating agencies downgraded Ghana’s economy in 2022, leading to the woes of the Cedi.
The private legal practitioner said, “Immediately upon the downgrade when the Cedi now has to face its true strength, we went to 15 Cedis to a dollar that was the true strength of the Ghana Ced.”
Currently, the Cedi is selling between 13.50 and 13.75 to a dollar.