The Ghana cedi is on its back foot – Johns Hopkins Economist Steve Hanke

Even if you have not been to Ghana recently, you must have been affected somehow by the soaring food prices globally recently die to the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war.

However, I can tell you that what you must have probably experienced is guaranteed to be modest comparatively to what Ghanaians are going through this period. Food prices have literally more than doubled within a few months space as well as other essentials going exponentially up.

The increase in these basic commodities like Bread, Rice, Vegetable Oils and others are more than often directly linked with the skyrocketing fuel prices which causes an immediate effect on transportation prices. This causes inflation and thereby a decrease in the value of the cedi which is Ghana’s official currency.

Steve Hanke; an economist at Johns Hopkins in the USA has been monitoring the depreciation of the Ghana Cedis for a while now and he stated via a post on Twitter that the cedi has depreciated by ~40.87% against the USD since Jan. 1, 2022. He also took the stage to call for Ghana’s government to install a currency board.

Here’s what he said below