The Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr. Ernest Addison, has strongly supported the continuation of the government’s Gold for Oil policy.
According to Dr. Addison, the initiative has been extremely beneficial to the nation during the economic downturn.
Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Monday, April 8, 2024, he explained that the programme has helped to stabilize the prices of fuel.
He also emphasized that discussions are currently ongoing to hand over the programme to a commercial bank.
“It is a programme that we recommend to continue because it helped us in the period of crisis. We only want to make sure that this is done by a commercial bank so that we can have to focus on our operations as a central bank so this is the discussions that we are holding going forward,” he said.
“But the ability to be able to exchange our natural resource directly for oil when oil prices get out of hand, we think it is a very innovative programme.
He continued by saying that should fuel prices go up again, government could fall on the policy for stabilization.
“This is an intervention which was very critical in the heat of the crisis, yes the foreign exchange market is functioning better than it was in 2022. Oil prices have come down much better than they were in 2022. The situation is much better now than it was in 2022 when the Gold4Oil policy was introduced.
“However, we think that it’s still an important programme for the government to have that option and to be able to empower commercial banks to undertake their activities. Should market sentiments change, which do every day, we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. And we will wake up and if we find ourselves in a situation where the prices are driving the pumps to where they were again. The government has an option to fall on. It’s a very innovative instrument.”