Kumasi, Ashanti Region, Ghana//-The Bank of Ghana (BoG) in collaboration with the Journalists for Business Advocacy (JBA) has built the capacity of over 20 journalists in northern sector of the country on financial and economic reporting.
The journalists were from the Ashanti, Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions.
The training which took place in Kumasi, the Ashanti regional capital enabled them to further intensify their reporting on monetary policy framework, macroeconomic, analysis of economic and financial data, small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) in the country, among others.
Also in July this year, the BoG sponsored another two-day training workshop for over 30 financial and economic journalists at Prampram in the Greater Accra Region.
The both workshops were organised by the JBA and sponsored by the BoG. They were themed: ‘Understanding Monetary Policy In A Post Pandemic Era’, aimed at deepening the understanding of the journalists on the theme.
The journalists who participated in the workshops were drawn from print, electronic media and online media.
Presenting the keynote of the Kumasi workshop, the Director of Research Department of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Philip Abradu Otoo who delivered the speech on behalf of the first Deputy Governor of the BoG, Dr Maxwell Opoku-Afari, lauded the JBA for putting together such a training that would immensely benefit the media in their reportage on the economy.
Erratic climatic conditions
Mr Otoo attributed the abrupt rise of inflation in the country to the erratic climatic conditions being recorded this year.
He noted that prices of food had seen an exponential rise this year especially during the COVID-19 lockdown period in March.
“Inflation is now from 9.7 to 10.6 percent and this largely is coming from food prices; these are issues that are seasonal and there are forces that show that the erratic weather conditions that we have experienced so far this year and we are trying to draw leakages to solve this”.
Mr Otoo advised that the banking behaviour of Ghanaians could ruin the gains made by the Central Bank in ensuring the resilience of the cedi.
In his welcome address, the President of JBA), Suleiman Mustapha appealed to journalists to exercise circumspection in second-guessing the policy decision(s) of the BoG, this is because “monetary policy formulation and implementation is a very complex task”.
He reminded the journalists that should always have in mind that the BoG knows more than them in the highly technical area of economic management.
Mr Mustapha used the occasion to encourage the participants to take the training seriously as knowing about the monetary policy and its impacts on the economy would enable them to evaluate what the BoG does.
The facilitators of the two-day training workshop (5th to 6th November 2021) were Dr Zakari Mumuni, Research Department of BoG; Francis Loloh, BoG; Nana Kwame Akosah, BoG; Acheampong Kwasi, BoG; and Tony Akuamoah-Boateng of the Financial Markets Department of the BoG.
African Eye Report
