“Useless” Redenomination of Cedi Under Kufour Was Used To 'Fool' Ghanaians - Pratt

Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr. says the redenomination of the Cedi which former President John Agyekum Kufour did to ‘fool’ Ghanaians that the Cedi was equivalent to the US dollar was a ‘useless’ move.

According to him, it was deceptive on the part of the Kufour administration to tell Ghanaians that knocking off zeros from the Cedi makes the Currency equally powerful as the US dollars when in actual fact the value of the Cedi was not the same as the dollars.

As a panel discussant on Radio Gold’s 'Alhaji and Alhaji' weekend talk show, Kwesi Pratt insisted the value of the Cedi under former President John Agyekum Kufour was the same after knocking off the zeros.

“Under President Kufour, there was a very simple thing which was done, which was as useless as what we are doing today . . . we knocked off a few zeros and claimed that now the Cedi was exchanging at Ghc1 to $1 . . . Like today, we can do that; we can knock off all the zeros and the Cedi will be exchanging at Gh1 to a dollar, but the value of the Cedi is the same,” he jabbed.

Affirming his claim of deception under Kufour’s administration, Kwesi Pratt quizzed why from Kufour’s era to now, the economy of the country has moved from less than Ghc1 to a dollar to Ghc5.1 to a dollar, reiterating that over 36 years, the Cedi has depreciated by more than 30,000 percent.

He again mentioned that the same way the Kufour administration knocked off a few zeros to make the Cedi attractive which many Ghanaians said it was not the solution to the problem of the economy, the Akufo-Addo government cannot organize a party after pumping $800 million into the economy with the expectation that the country’s currency is depreciating.

“So the redenomination didn’t solve the problem of depreciating values. What he did was to create the impression to fool the people that the Cedi was appreciating when indeed the Cedi was depreciating . . . they have not solved any problem of the economy,” he slammed.