Kwabena Peprah
Entrepreneur and real estate developer, Kwabena Peprah, has called for a total ban on foreign currency accounts in Ghana, arguing that the practice undermines the stability of the cedi and fuels dollarization of the economy.
Reacting to the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) recent directive prohibiting the pricing of goods and services in foreign currency, Peprah said the move is inadequate if citizens and businesses can still hold and transact freely in dollars and other currencies.
“The situation where everyone can open an account and keep foreign currency in it is one of our problems. But the people supposed to take that decision themselves own some of these accounts, so who will bell the cat?” he questioned.
According to him, allowing only cedi-denominated accounts—except for diplomatic missions and a few specialized sectors—would force legitimate forex transactions to pass through proper exchange systems, easing pressure on the local currency.
Peprah warned that the BoG risks losing credibility if it continues to issue directives without addressing the underlying structural issues. “Until that is done, the BoG has the authority but not the moral right to tell people not to peg their prices to the USD,” he said.
He further argued that Ghana’s fixation on the US dollar is misplaced, given that the country’s largest trading partner is China. He urged policymakers to create direct channels for trade settlement in the Chinese yuan (RMB) to reduce costs for traders and improve currency stability.
Peprah also pointed to long delays by banks in processing legitimate foreign transfers as another driver of the black market. “Are we wondering why abokyi will never go out of business? We enable them. The black market will never die, and people will peg their prices to the real rates they get and not the nice ones displayed in the banks,” he stressed.
