The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has lauded Ghana on recent stabilisation of the Cedi, noting that the development signals improvements in the country’s economic fundamentals, renewed policy credibility, and investor confidence.
Mr. Abebe Aemro Selassie, Director, African Department, IMF, said this at the October 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa in Washington, D.C, during the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings.
“A couple of years ago, all the concern in Ghana was about uncontrolled depreciation. It’s generally good to see stabilisation returning to the economy… allowing the Cedi to stabilise and maybe even begin to appreciate,” he said.
Mr. Selassie underscored that “all such things are good for competitiveness; the direction of travel that is the right one and the appreciation reflective of some fundamentals, but we don’t want that to get too frothy.”
He, however, cautioned that excessive appreciation of the exchange rate could have a negative bearing on the Cedi and the economy at large, urging the Central Bank to reduce its interference.
The IMF African Department Director explained that Ghana’s relatively shallow capital, foreign exchange and money markets, exposed it to volatility, which could be disruptive to the economy, calling for a balanced approached to handling the forex market.
“It’s about striking the right balance. Too much interference can cause problems when you have a lot of flaws and you’re trying to identify and calibrate policies to minimise that flaws,” he stated.
In the first quarter of 2025, the Bank of Ghana injected US$1.4 billion into the currency markets, with additional US$2bn in the second quarter, helping boost the appreciation of the Cedi and shore up the country’s external buffers.
Meanwhile, Dr. Johnson Asiama Pandit, Governor of the Bank of Ghana in an earlier engagement on a different platform at the meetings, noted the Bank’s interventions were to prevent a total market collapse, saying, “we do not over-support the markets at all.”
“All we seek to do is to limit the volatilities in the markets, to ensure that we have that smooth dynamics in the market. And that’s the framework we will maintain going forward,” he emphasised.
The President, John Dramani Mahama, during a media engagement in September, in Accra, noted that the Central Bank intervened in the foreign exchange market to correct some imbalances warranted by the appreciation of the Cedi.
“The Bank of Ghana has been intervening in the forex market, but they’ve withdrawn,” he said, explaining that it was because of exponential increase in imports, occasioned by the rapid appreciation in the value of the Cedi.
The situation, he said was not favourable to exporters, hence, the need to adjust and balance developments in the market to ensure that exporters were able to do good business and importers also not overburdened by high forex.