Bank of Ghana (BoG) has advocated the need to devise mechanisms to tap in diaspora resources including issuing diaspora bonds to help close the existing financing gap in the economy.

According to the BoG, this will require urgent measures to address diaspora investment challenges and create a conducive and enabling environment that would attract diaspora capital into Ghana and the sub-region as a whole.

This advocacy forms part of policy strategies that the Central Bank believes will help improve sentiments about the economy and help catalyze growth.

“The Central Banks believe that when these structures are firmly in place and institutions are working to deliver their best, then together with sound pursuit of monetary policy actions, should help re-anchor inflation expectations, regain macroeconomic stability and restore investor confidence in the economy”.
Bank of Ghana

Dr. Maxwell Opoku-Afari, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, said aside attracting diaspora investment into the country, there is the need for expenditure-control measures by Government, together with new revenue mobilization measures, that would support the fiscal consolidation path and help lift financing constraints.

Need for policies to improve the business operating environment

Additionally, he urged the government to roll out policies that will improve the business operating environment to attract private capital, both foreign direct investment and portfolio investment. He explained that the government can achieve this through rule of law, protection of property rights, transparency and accountability and political and macroeconomic stability that will contribute immensely to regaining investor confidence.

Dr. Maxwell Opoku-Afari also highlighted the need for exports diversification and building imports substitution industries to leverage the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) that provides a tremendous opportunity to increase intraregional trade and regional integration. This, he said, “will help improve the trade balance and possibly the current account and reduce the need for external financing”.

The First Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana said that one of the most important things that is needed currently to address the country’s economic difficulties is building investor confidence. He said efforts at boosting confidence will have to come from all facets of economic life.

“The institutions must play their role, private agents must take advantage of conditions around them, Government must play its role in delivering growth in a stable economic environment and the Central Bank will have to guarantee low and stable inflation using the tools available at their disposal. The press must leverage all to influence the direction of economic thinking and to influence society”.
Bank of Ghana

Call on the Press to influence society

Still touching on the role of the Press, he re-called the IPI cardinal principle of journalism which calls on the press to Inform, Persuade and Influence society. In so doing, he underscored that the press will have to use all available data at its disposal, to drive analytical discourse and imbibe confidence.

He urged journalists to go beyond the data provided them and do more interrogation of the data to understand better the data generating facts. “All these work in concert to engender economic confidence and this is where we ought to be moving towards”, he said.

Dr. Maxwell Opoku-Afari disclosed this in a remark read on his behalf by Philip Abradu-Otoo, Director of Research, BoG, at the Journalists for Business Advocacy (JBA) Training Workshop in Financial Reporting.

His remarks focused broadly on: the current state of the Ghanaian economy and the policies being pursued; the macroeconomic outlook and policies going forward; and the need for accurate reportage on these developments to rebuild confidence in the economy.