The record gains by the cedi last year by weathering the perennial pressures and anxieties associated with elections to post a depreciation rate that is the healthiest in all election years since 2004 is one of the leading stories in the Ghanaian press on Tuesday.
The Graphic reports that the cedi broke its own record last year by weathering the perennial pressures and anxieties associated with elections to post a depreciation rate that is the healthiest in all election years since 2004.
It shed 3.9 percent of its value to the US dollar last year, compared to the past three election years when the annual rates of depreciation were either close to 10 percent or in double digits.
Data from the Bank of Ghana (BoG) indicated that the cedi lost 20.9 percent, 15.7 per cent and 9.7 percent of its value to the dollar in 2008, 2012 and 2016, respectively, under peculiar challenges that analysts trace to what they term the exigencies of the political business cycle.
By shedding 3.9 percent of its value in 2020, which was an election year, the cedi had enjoyed its second best performance in an election year since 1992. Its best election year remains 2004 when it depreciated by 2.5 percent, the data showed.
Beyond setting the record, the calmness in the foreign exchange market helped to tame inflation and protect the capital of importers against foreign exchange losses although it also eroded the profits of the central bank.
The newspaper says that the University of Ghana has altered its grading system for students to reflect the peculiarity of the time occasioned by the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19).
Consequently, grades for assignments will now be marked over 70 per cent, while the examination takes 30 percent. This is a reversal of the norm, where assignments were marked over 30 percent while the examination took 70 percent.
This is to make for the limited time the students have to assimilate everything they have been taught within the seven weeks.
The alteration, which maintains the quality of tuition and learning, is mainly in response to the university’s decision to split undergraduate students into two streams over the semester in seven weeks instead of the usual 13 weeks in a semester.
The Dean of Students of the university, Professor Godfred Alufar Bokpin, who disclosed this in an interview in Accra, explained that because of the limited time the students would have for academic work, more emphasis would be placed on assignments.
He said it was the conviction of the management of the university that the students “may not have enough time preparing for examinations, but when it comes to assignments they will have enough time to do all the readings and the consultations to do proper work and submit for a bigger percentage marks.”
The Graphic also reports that unless one side backs down and peace prevails on Friday, January 15, the New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress members of parliament are bent on a showdown in the house which portends nothing but chaos over the lingering matter of which side is in the majority.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Nsawam Adoagyiri, and Chief Whip for the NPP caucus, Frank Annoh Dompreh has served notice he and his colleagues will on Friday use “any means legitimate” to fend off any attempts by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) members to occupy the Majority seats.
He says the issue of which side of the two caucuses is in the majority is no longer debatable and that NDC members will not be allowed to take up the right side of the Speaker as they did on January 7 when MPs-elect met to be inaugurated and to elect a Speaker.
While it has been the convention in Ghana’s parliament for Majority sides to occupy seats to the right hand side of the Speaker and the Minority to the left, the NDC side which is claiming majority in spite of having 137 seats as the NPP from the 2020 general elections, took the majority side, much to the chagrin of the NPP members who had occupied the side in the immediate past administration.
The action of the NDC MPs led to a momentary stand-off, degenerating later into a near-fight when Mrs. Ursula Owusu-Eufaula, NPP MP for Ablekuma West who had insisted on occupying her ‘rightful seat’ and thus sat among the NDC members, was violently shoved off her seat.
But Annoh Dompreh, speaking on Asempa FM’s Ekosii Sen programme on Monday, said come Friday, the NPP members are not going to be as docile as to be bullied again by the NDC MPs because they from the NPP, will take over the Majority side using “any means legitimate.”
Parliament regroups on Friday for the first time since rising from their rancourous investiture and election of Alban Sumana Bagbin as Speaker of the 8th Parliament.
The Times reports that the World Bank has revised Ghana’s 2021 growth rate and forecasted the economy to grow at 1.4 percent this year.
This year’s forecasted Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate is below the 3.4 percent the Bank earlier projected in June last year and weaker than the Sub-Saharan growth rate of 2.7 percent in 2021 – 0.4 percentage point weaker than the previously projected – before firming to 3.3 percent in 2022.
In its latest report dubbed Global Economic Prospects, the World Bank said the lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic on oil and other sectors of the economy would influence the country’s growth.
“In Ghana the region’s fourth largest economy the expected resilience in agriculture will not be sufficient to offset the pandemic’s lingering impact on oil and other sectors. As a result, the growth forecast for 2021-22 has been downgraded,” the report said.
The report said food price surges were bound to worsen in equality and raise food insecurity among the poor in some African countries including Ghana.
GIK/APA