BoG: We Must Be Commended For Boldly Taking The Decision To Review Forex Rules

�If you come up with a policy, you have to find out how the public is responding to it. It might be the best policy but if it does not get the appropriate response, you have to be bold enough to go back and review it,� says Benjamin Amoah, Head of Financial Stability Department, Bank of Ghana (BoG).

The Central Bank, over the weekend, revised its rules on foreign exchange operations to address challenges facing the business community.

According to them, the limit of 1,000 dollars on over-the-counter foreign exchange cash withdrawal has been removed, therefore Foreign Exchange Accounts (FEAs) and Foreign currency Accounts (FCAs) holders could cash more than 1,000 dollars per bank transaction.

For further reading on the reviewed policies, go to http://business.peacefmonline.com/pages/finance/201408/210061.php

Reacting to Bank of Ghana�s decision to reverse some of its policies which was instituted to save the cedi from further depreciating against the Dollar on Monday�s edition of �Kokrokoo�, Mr Amoah said: �We listened to the public and we paid attention to feedback.�

According to him, when a policy is not working, one needs to be �man enough to change it� to help businessmen and women do their economic activities normally.

�We have not completely withdrawn everything�some of the policies which were preventing businessmen and women from taking money to the bank have been withdrawn. We were facing implementation challenges because some of the policies were not accepted by the public. If you come out with a policy, you cannot just reverse it because of what someone says. You have to give it some time to see if it will work��

Mr Amoah however, asked Ghanaians to give them (BoG) some credit for admitting that some of the measures they brought did not help businesses in the country and for that matter have reversed it.

�You have to give us some credit for being man enough and reversing some of the policies�the media is positive. Let�s just speak positive about the media and about the economy,� he urged.

Source: Rebecca Addo Tetteh/Peacefmonline.com