BOG urged to encourage and promote economic growth

The Bank of Ghana has been urged to create a device of limiting the carrying of physical cash in business transactions by limiting the use of cedit, debit and high purchase systems.

A "Banking Week" should also be instituted to reward banks that excel in innovative modern creative banking system that could retrieve cash from people's homes and hands to be lodged or saved in the banks.

The sentiments were expressed by Mr Emmanuel Adjei Boye, NPP- Krowor in a statement in Parliament on Tuesday on "The Bank of Ghana Act (Act 612) vis -a -vis the constitutional responsibilities of the bank, expectations and the way forward in the economic development of Ghana".

Mr Boye said it was time that the Bank of Ghana (BOG) recognised the usefulness of communication of monetary policy decisions to the general public and to guide inflationary expectations and to seek public consensus.

He said since the constitutional independence of the Bank of Ghana was to keep government and the money market away from each other, the problem of excessive Government domestic borrowing must therefore, be got rid of because of the bank's refusal to keep on financing deficit spending.

Mr Boye said another area the BoG through the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Ministry of Finance has to critically take a look at, was the "dollarization" of the economy that resultrd from strong expectations of inflation and cedi depreciation.

He said to correct this anomaly, there was the need to change people's perceptions of the cedi's strength against major trading currencies and for the MPC to work towards confidence creation in the cedi by the general public.