Business owners in Accra have identified the cedi\u2019s depreciation as their major challenge and want the government to stem the situation.<\/p>\n
They contend that the development continues to impact their operations adversely hence require a solution to the perennial issue.<\/p>\n
The comments come three days ahead of the \u00a0President Akufo Addo\u2019s state of the nation address to Parliament on Thursday, February 8, 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I\u2019m rating the President, I\u2019ll give him 40% because he is doing some good things. But for us especially the travel and tours industry, because I deal with the Abossey Okai spare parts dealers, the volatile exchange rate regime really affects my business. If they can\u2019t travel to bring in goods then I lose money,\u201d one business woman stressed.<\/p>\n
Another stated, \u201cBefore Nana Akufo Addo came into office, the business was okay and people were buying a lot of items from us. But now they don\u2019t have the money to buy it and business has become very slow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Checks by\u00a0Citi Business News<\/strong>\u00a0also indicate that the government would have to do more in order to meet its main economic targets for this year.<\/p>\n The government was unable to meet some targets projected for the first year in office.<\/p>\n For 2017, government targeted to rake in an estimated 44.9 billion cedis and spend about 58 billion cedis.<\/p>\n But official figures from the Ministry of Finance indicate that as at September last year, government has spent 36 billion cedis on areas such as wages and salary, capital expenditure on roads and other infrastructure, among others.<\/p>\n Revenue accrued stood at 28.4 billion cedis as at September last year.<\/p>\n This comprised tax revenue of about 22 billion cedis and non tax revenue of about 3.8 billion cedis.<\/p>\n Meanwhile inflation ended last year at 11.8 percent, up from the government\u2019s projected 11.2 percent.<\/p>\n It may however suggest that the government\u2019s projected economic growth target of 6.3 percent could be achieved as figures from the Ghana Statistical Service show that the economy has grown by about 7 percent as at September last year.<\/p>\n Even though the cedi has witnessed marginal stability against the dollar, it depreciated by 3.4 percent to the dollar on the average in 2017.<\/p>\n On the country\u2019s debt, the total debt stock hit 139 billion cedis as of November 2017; representing 69 percent of GDP.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Pius Amihere Eduku & Bobbie Osei\/citibusinessnews.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Business owners in Accra have identified the cedi\u2019s depreciation as their major challenge and want the government to stem the situation. They contend that the development continues to impact their operations adversely hence require a solution to the perennial issue. The comments come three days ahead of the \u00a0President Akufo Addo\u2019s state of the nation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":52356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[121,32,171,11],"tags":[4507],"yoast_head":"\n