ACCRA: Ghana’s central bank on Monday held its main interest rate steady at 30% for the second meeting in a row to keep inflation falling.
The West African cocoa, gold and oil producer is negotiating a debt restructuring with its bilateral and commercial creditors to try to emerge from its worst economic crisis in a generation.
It has received the first tranche of an International Monetary Fund $3 billion lending programme and expects to get another after a meeting of the Fund’s executive board before the end of the year.
“There is a need to keep the policy rate tighter for longer until inflation is firmly anchored on a downward trajectory towards the medium-term target,” the Bank of Ghana said in a monetary policy statement.
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Ghana’s inflation slowed to 35.2% year-on-year in October, from 38.1% in September and 40.1% in August.
The central bank targets inflation of 8% with a margin of error of 2 percentage points either side of that.
As an additional measure, the bank said a new unified Cash Reserve Ratio for total deposits was being reset to 15% with effect from Nov. 30.
That measure was aimed at addressing excess structural liquidity and providing an added impetus to disinflation, it added.
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