I had sleepless nights over exchange rate hikes – Dr. Bawumia

Dr. Bawumia , Ghana’s vice president, has revealed that he suffered sleepless nights when Ghana went through a phase of persistent hikes in exchange rates leading to a rise in the pricing of fuel products.

According to Dr. Bawumia , the situation and the quest to find a workable solution around it left him sleepless.

“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.

”In my humble opinion, it is the most important macro-economic policy intervention to deal with the exchange rate depreciation, fuel price, and food price issues that we have had.

“We have not only seen a decline in prices of fuel from GH¢23.00 per litre to around GH¢12, but we have also seen stability in the exchange rate,” Dr. Bawumia noted

Many are those who have louded the veep for his ingenuity in turning the fuel situation of the country around using the Gold-for-Oil policy.