A former Chief Executive of the Ghana National Petroleum Authority, Alex Kofi Mensah Mould, accused the leadership of the Bank of Ghana (BoG) of not ensuring realistic foreign exchange rates.
He believes the BoG should partly be blamed for the incessant fuel increment by the Bulk Oil Distributors (BDCs) and Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs), adding that the former refuses to give the latter an accurate foreign exchange rate.
According to Mr. Mould, the BoG is being dishonest in its publication of the current foreign exchange rate, adding that the commercial banks don’t trade with the BoG’s rate when dealing with their customers.
The former NPA boss urged the BoG to be more proactive by giving Ghanaians realistic and practical rates.
Speaking on Citi TV’s political show, The Big Issue, Mr. Mould said: “the price build-up we see today, I am told some of the BDCs use between GHS 18-GHS 19 per a dollar as exchange rate, and that is why you are getting a price of GHS23.49 per a litre of diesel. The market rate was about GHS 14 per dollar, and this is the commercial rate. Nobody uses the BoG rate.”
“BoG rate I don’t know what type of rate it is, because it is not the rate the banks trade with themselves or trade with their customers. BoG needs to be more proactive and give us realistic and practical rates and stop fooling the people of Ghana that, this is the exchange rate of the market. Everybody knows that nobody uses the BoG exchange rates.”
He stressed that the structural problem in the market needs to be addressed, indicating that some of the OMCs wait till the dollar goes up and then slap it on consumers.
“The challenge is that these BDCs don’t know where they are going to get forex from, and two, they don’t know what the price will be. There’s a structural problem in the market and I think it needs to be addressed,” he said on the Big Issue.
