The GOVERNMENT is planning to inject an amount of $2 billion into the country’s dollar reserves towards stabilising the exchange rate.
President Akufo-Addo announced this among other major recovery reliefs for the ailing economy and to restore it to its pre-COVID-19 levels
The reliefs include tackling the rising fuel prices occasioned by the global economic turmoil from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, and measures to address the persistent rise in prices of goods and services.
The Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has been tasked to fashion out measures to arrest the rising inflation from food prices.
Also, the Energy Minister, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh and Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, have been urged to put up measures to mitigate the rising cost of fuel and its attendant pressures on the cost of living.
Other measures include the opening of the country’s land borders, easing of general COVID-19 restrictions, and measures to arrest currency depreciation.
These urgent reliefs were sanctioned at a crunch three-day Cabinet retreat that took place over the weekend at Peduase Lodge in the Eastern Region, where the President and his Cabinet ministers reviewed data on the effects of the COVID-19 on all sectors of the Ghanaian economy, and by extension the economic blowbacks resulting from the conflict in Ukraine.
Sources at the Cabinet retreat also disclosed that COVID-19 tests will be scrapped for vaccinated passengers who are either entering or leaving the country whilst government will cut its expenditures significantly.
In a tweet on Thursday, Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, disclosed that the essence of the retreat was to enable the government to proffer solutions to ease the burden on Ghanaians.
“In the coming days’ details will be announced including when and how borders will be opened, the removal of some testing protocols, shoring up the currency and further cutting expenditures while ensuring growth,” the minister told pressmen on the sides of the retreat.
It is expected that the President, Finance Minister, and other ministers as well as the Bank of Ghana, in the coming days, will provide details on the reliefs and the appropriate sectors.
The reliefs are also expected to answer questions being posed by economic watchers on how the Government of Ghana will respond to the current global economic challenges.
