Bank Of Ghana Negates Minority Claims Of Printing GHC22B New Notes

By Maxwell Nkansah The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has negated the accusation by the Minority in Parliament that the Bank has printed an amount of GHC 22.04 billion to finance the government’s budget without parliamentary approval. In a statement, the BoG Secretary, Sandra Thompson, said the BoG deems it necessary to provide clarity on the issue and to set the records straight. According to her, the amount of GHC 22.04 billion represents net claims on the government and not new currency printed to support the government’s budget. Miss. Thompson further stated that the net claims of GHC 22.04 billion have four components. It says: "GoG stocks and bonds are sold by commercial banks to the Bank of Ghana under repurchase agreements, by which banks routinely manage their liquidity positions." "IMF SDR allocation disbursed to Government through Bank of Ghana; Draw-down of Government’s own deposits held with Bank of Ghana; Negative balance on Government’s account with Bank of Ghana at a point in time, and self-liquidated as new Government deposits are credited to the account," the Secretary disclosed. She continued to say that, there is an amount of GHC1.6 billion which reflects GoG Stocks and bonds sold by commercial banks to Bank of Ghana under repurchase agreements. "These bonds, held by a commercial bank since 2021 were purchased by Bank of Ghana to provide liquidity to the bank, under a repurchase agreement that required the bank to buy back these bonds at a later date."