The Director of Research at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Dr John Kwakye, has said that there is a need to build firewalls around their reserves locally to protect them from plundering by African leaders.
Until that is done, he said, the reserves should remain where they are in foreign institutions.
His comments come at a time when President Akufo-Addo has proposed that Ghana withdraw at least 30 percent of all public funds and other assets kept in foreign banks and financial institutions.
Speaking at the Presidential Dialogue on African Union Financial Institutions organised on the sidelines of the 37th African Union summit in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, President Akufo-Addo asked his colleagues to take a collective decision for all countries to withdraw 30% of foreign reserves and deposit them in African Institutions.
“We’re all in agreement that the way the Global Financial architecture works at the moment, it doesn’t work in our favour and that there is a need to make some fundamental systemic reforms,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo added, “As it stands virtually all our countries we hold our reserves in foreign Banks attracting largely negative rates of Interest.
“We should decide that a minimum of 30% of the reserves of each one of us (African States) Sovereign reserves should be invested in the African multilateral institutions.
“I speak about the ADB, I speak of Afreximbank (African Export-Import Bank) which will strengthen their balance sheets and strengthen their capacity also to facilitate more and more resources for our development.”
Commenting on this, Dr John Kwakye wrote on his X platform that “Until we are able to build firewalls around our reserves locally to protect them from plundering by African leaders, they should remain where they are in foreign institutions.”
He added “One reason for saving our reserves in foreign institutions is to keep them out of reach of plundering African leaders. Until we can protect the reserves locally, which l doubt that we can, they should remain where they are.”