Bank of Ghana (BoG) Governor, Dr Henry Kofi Wampah, will retire on Thursday (tomorrow), cutting short a four-year term during which he has struggled to curb inflation and stem the decline of the national currency (Ghana Cedi).
Wampah, whose term officially ends on Aug. 5, told Reuters he had informed President John Mahama of his intention to leave by the end of this month, adding the decision was partly linked to presidential and parliamentary elections planned for November, this year.
“I told him I wanted to leave office early and we have agreed that I will exit at the end of March,” Wampah said. “It is just fair to leave early in order to give enough room for my successor, whoever it might be, to settle down before we get to the elections.”
He said one of his two deputies, either Millison Narh or Abdul Nashiru Issahaku, was expected to serve as interim central bank governor until President Mahama chooses a permanent successor.
Once considered a rising star in Africa, Ghana, which exports cocoa, gold and oil, has been dogged by large budget deficits, ballooning public debt and inflation that consistently tops government targets.
Mahama appointed Wampah amid serious fiscal imbalances caused mainly by election spending in 2012 and a burdensome public sector wage bill that complicated the bank’s task of managing the money supply.
Wampah responded with a string of monetary policy reforms, including tighter foreign exchange liquidity management to slow inflation.
The bank held its benchmark interest rate at 26 percent in its latest rate decision last week.
IMF PROGRAMME
As a member of the economic management team, he also helped negotiate a $918 million programme with the International Monetary Fund last year aimed at re-establishing macro-economic stability.
“It’s unfortunate that Wampah is not going to be there to complete the IMF program through the election period,” said Joe Abbey, director of the Accra-based Centre for Policy Analysis.
“I’ve found him to be somebody who is able to stand his grounds even if that didn’t seem to be the most palatable position to take,” he added.
While the cedi currency has for the first time in several years withstood the seasonal first quarter pressure to rally, it has lost 94 percent of its value against the dollar since Dr Wampah was sworn in January 2013.
Consumer price inflation meanwhile slowed in February, but still stood at 18.5 percent.
Such crippling figures have earned Dr Wampah heavy criticism from some quarters.
He has also faced calls for his resignation this year over what some said was the bank’s failure to effectively monitor DKM Microfinance, a small firm that lost millions of cedis in its customers deposits before it had to be liquidated.
Dr Wampah dismissed suggestions that he was being forced to step down due to the controversy surrounding the company’s collapse.
Like many Ghanaians who are not enthused with the performance of the stepping down Governor, the New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament for New Juabeng South, Dr. Mark Assibey Yeboah described Dr Wampah’s tenure as the worst in the most recent history of the bank.
Chronicling the tenures of Dr Paul Acquah who was adjudged the African Central Bank Governor of the year 2005, Dr Kwabena Dufuor, Dr. Kwasi Amissah Arthur, whose tenure saw the NDC government attain the longest single digit inflation, Mark Assibey Yeboah said Dr Wampah will no doubt score the lowest marks amongst the lot.
The retiring governor saw a number of challenges during his reign. The country’s currency since 2012 suffered substantial depreciation to other currencies.
The currency was said to have depreciated by 31.2% in 2014. The measures taken by the governor, according to critics, were just as worse as the depreciation itself.
The Bank pumped some $20million into the economy to keep the currency from falling any further. The governor also announced a number of measures in an attempt to fight the swift depreciation.
“The regulations require all commercial banks in the country to quote a two-way pricing of currency exchange and limit the spread on corporate transactions to a maximum of 200 percentage points,” one of the regulations read.
The regulations were not successful and the currency depreciated some more, but over the last few weeks it has experienced some stability.
Speaking to Joy News Dr Assibey Yeboah said Dr Wampah will best be remembered for depreciation of the currency and the infamous microfinance debacle which has led to thousands losing their investments in one of the biggest financial scams to have hit the country.
He said the core mandate of Bank of Ghana is to “keep inflation low,” but the governor failed, adding that under Dr Wampah the Bank of Ghana “lacked credibility in the conduct of monetary policy.”
He said if BoG under Wampah raised the moratorium on DKM, one of the microfinance companies involved in the scam, then the governor has to take responsibility for it.
Dr Wampah is “well trained” but did very little on the job as governor, according to him.
African Eye Report
