On April 3^rd 2019, The Economic Management Team headed by the Vice President had a Town hall Meeting with the Public perhaps the first of its kind. The following extract is taken from Myjoyonline.com on the 5^th of May, 2019 at 3pm. Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia says the sharp depreciation of the Ghana cedi can be blamed on restrictions by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the Bank of Ghana to build its foreign reserves to about $800 million. Speaking at the Maiden Town Hall Meeting, Head of the Economic Management Team, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia said the situation has affected the supply of the dollar to businesses and the trading public between February and March this year. Dr Bawumia said the most important and the proximate cause of the recent depreciation is the time inconsistency of an IMF prior action of the reserve target. At the end of January, as part of the seven prior action to complete the IMF program which went to the Board on March 20, 2019 the Bank of Ghana was required to ensure net international reserves (NIR) target on March 14, 2019 are the same levels as it was at the end of December 2018. A year after, you had a wonderful presentation on Ghanas Balance of Payments from Bank of Ghana with beautiful insights given the statistics that were contained in the presentation.

Immediately after, Covid-19 interrupted our normal lives and created a new normal sending the noisy world into half time. Wide scale global, regional and local supply chain disruptions were evident impacting world crude price and Ghanas petroleum receipt and for that the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA). In addition, other important tax handles have been impacted heavily given also the partial lockdown of Greater Accra and Greater Kumasi that put the economy practically on hold for three weeks. The fiscal deficit has therefore expanded from GHS 18.9 billion in the 2020 budget to GHS 30.2 billion. The public debt has increased to GHS 236.1 billion and will rise further towards the end of the year. It is noteworthy that exchange rate depreciation alone added approximately GHS 15 billion to the public debt last year and perhaps highlights the importance of effective economic management and debt management. Bank of Ghana has in response to the impact of Covid-19 as it has elevated our fiscal deficit adopted Asset Purchase arrangement under a Quantitative Easing (QE). The Central Bank indicated it stands ready to support government with GHS 10 billion in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Out of this, the Bank has already purchased a Government of Ghana COVID-19 relief bond with a face value of GH5.5 billion at the Monetary Policy Rate with a 10-year tenor and a moratorium of two (2) years (principal and interest)

In the midst of all these, it was suggested that Bank of Ghana should fast track the introduction of the Chinese Renminbi (RMB or CNY) to ease the pressure on the dollar on the China-Ghana trade corridor. Discuss to what extent would this intervention ease the pressure on the local currency