The Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr Ernest Kwamina Yedu Addison, has described calls by the Minority in Parliament, the NDC and other groups to resign as “completely unnecessary.”
He has dismissed the calls saying he is not going to be moved by their actions to tender in his resignation as they are demanding.
Dr. Addison was speaking in an interview with international business website, Central Banking, when he made the revelation.
“The Minority in Parliament have many channels to channel their grievances in civilised societies, not through demonstrations in the streets as hooligans,” Dr. Addison said in reference to the #OccupyBoGProtest on Tuesday.
The October 3 demonstration was organised by the aforementioned entities to get the governor tender in his resignation following what they described as mismanagement of the bank by its administrators.
According to the Minority in Parliament, the governor was collapsing the central bank for incurring a loss of GHC60.8 billion in 2022, bequeathing a negative equity of GHC 55.1 billion in addition.
The Bank of Ghana had disputed the claims that the bank was being collpased citing the government’s domestic debt exchange programme as reason for the losses.
At the interview, Dr. Addison also rejected claims by the groups that it printed money to support the government’s ostentatious lifestyle.
The governor said the central bank only performed its legally mandated responsibility to the government in 2020 and 2022 to meet the crises the country faced at the time.
The GHC60.81 billion loss incurred in the year 2022 was against a profit of GHC1.23 billion recorded in 2021.
Regarding the central bank’s 2022 losses, Addison told Central Banking: “The impairment of the bank’s holdings of debt which led to the losses was a conditionality for the IMF programme. Nobody at the Bank of Ghana forgave any debt.”
Commenting on the construction of the new head office, the governor said “it was not a decision taken during a crisis.”
This was “when the bank was profitable and appropriated some of its profits for the new headquarters.”
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