I Had Sleepless Nights Over Exchange Rate Hikes – Bawumia

Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has admitted that he had trouble sleeping during the period when Ghana was experiencing a period of consistent exchange rate increases that increased the cost of fuel.

The vice president claimed that the predicament and his efforts to come up with a workable solution kept him up at night.

“One moment which gave me a lot of sleepless nights personally was when at one point, the forward exchange rate of GH¢19 to the dollar was used to price fuel at the pump,” Dr Bawumia stated during the commissioning of the new head office of the Bulk Oil Storage Transportation Company in Accra on Wednesday, March 15, 2023.

“We were faced with how much higher it could go. We were faced with a very critical situation because we didn’t have enough foreign exchange reserves to meet this persistent demand.

“Today, you are seeing that in Kenya, they are facing significant shortage of foreign exchange reserves resulting in petroleum queues.

“So, we had to think outside the box to prevent Ghana from going through that situation… and this is where the thinking for gold-for-oil came in,” the vice president added.

The head of Government’s Economic Management Committee, however, noted that the quest to find a solution led to the conception of the government’s Gold-for-Oil policy.

Last year, Dr. Bawumia announced a new government policy dubbed gold-for-oil. The policy, as explained by the government, is to allow the government to pay for imported oil products with gold, in a direct barter with gold purchased by the Central Bank.