Money does not like noise – Akufo-Addo
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has stated that “money does not like” in response to people who say things to cause fear and panic among the people.
During his address to the nation on Sunday night to speak on the economy, President Akufo-Addo blamed a WhatsApp audio which caused people to send people to the banks and forex bureaus to deposit their cedis in exchange for dollars, a situation he said resulted in the further depreciation of the cedi.
“Fellow Ghanaians, as the French would say, l’argent n’aime pas le bruit, to wit, money does not like noise, sika mpɛ dede. Where there is chaos, where there is noise, where there is unrest, you will not find money. If you talk down your money, it will go down. If you allow some unidentifiable person to talk down your money, it will go down.
“The recent turbulence on the financial markets was caused by low inflows of foreign exchange and was made worse in the last two to three weeks, in particular, by the activities of speculators and the Black Market. An anonymous two-minute audio message on a WhatsApp platform predicting a so-called haircut on Government bonds sent all of us into banks and forex bureaus to dump our cedis, and, before we knew it, the cedi had depreciated further. All of us can play a part in helping to strengthen the cedi by having confidence in the currency and avoiding speculation. Let us keep our cedi as the good store of value it is. To those who make it a habit of publishing falsehoods, which result in panic in the system, I say to them that the relevant state agencies will act against such persons.”
He promised that efforts are underway to restore order which includes strict supervision by the Bank of Ghana, fresh inflows of dollars and the introduction of a new legal and regulatory framework to ensure all “foreign exchange earned from operations in Ghana are, initially, paid to banks domiciled in Ghana to help boost the domestic foreign exchange market” among others.
