Ghana Monetary Policy Rate reduction from 16% to 14.5% is salutary—–Amadu, Chair, Afro Arab Microfinance

Alhaji Salamu Amadu has commended the governor of Bank of Ghana, BOG,  Dr. Ernest Addison for the bold step he took to help stabilise the Ghana’s financial sector.

This appraisal and submission which was lifted from his  Facebook wall and made available to OpenLife by Dickson Boadi, a Ghanaian media expert, was the decision of Ghana apex bank to reduce the country’s Monetary Policy Rate, MPR to 14.5 percent from 16 percent

 “Desperate times ask desperate measures I salute you Dr. Ernest Kwamina Yedu Addison Governor of Bank Of Ghana. Ghana First in Sub-Saharan Africa to cut MPR  to combat the pandemic.”

Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to cut interest rates in response to the coronavirus pandemic, reducing its benchmark to an eight-year low.

The monetary policy rate was reduced to 14.5% from 16%, the first cut since January 2019, the Bank of Ghana said in an emailed statement on Wednesday. The Monetary Policy Committee was originally scheduled to announce its decision on March 23.

Growth in gross domestic product could decline to 5% and could even slow to 2.5% in a worst-case scenario, said the central bank. The International Monetary Fund’s most recent growth forecast for Ghana was 5.6%.

The MFI is highly dependent on family incomes and family cannot be separated from the business. So with the fee of the Civic 19, and family left in fear and indoors, their incomes will be affected and and implies MFIs default rate will increase.

Micro businesses will suffer a great deal. Some will be out of the market entirely. Credit risk will be very high and sales will go down significantly for the high end MFIs.

What should be done is to educate them to keep the capitals in stock. MFIs have to reschedule the facilities and defer repayment . Education put in place

Government has to intervene and provide stimulus packages for MFIs since their impairments would be worsened after the lockdown.

Even though BOG has reduced the Prime Rate, GRR has not improved. Banks are still lending at GRR of 16.15%. MFIs still get their funds at high rates. We will monitor how the rates behave to be able to impact the lives of our customers.

As part of the Afro-Arab Microfinance cooperate social responsibility(CSR) the company has distributed 200,000 hand sanitizers and hand gloves to the zongo communities across the country under the leadership of the Board Chairman Alhaji Salamu Amadu.

Alhaji Salamu Amadu won the 40 under forty banking and finance award in 2019.

Chairman Salamu as he is affectionately called in the business arena has contributed tremendously to make sure poverty becomes history in the zongo communities.