Government has announced that it will be unable to force traders to decrease the prices of their goods despite the cedi gaining some stability against the major foreign currencies in the past few weeks.
Traders were forced to increase the prices of their goods early this year when the cedi depreciated by about 40 per cent against major trading currencies. This raised the cost of living for most Ghanaians.
This is because most of those goods were imported so they [traders] needed more cedis to buy the dollar and this affected the pricing.
On Tuesday, on the inter-bank foreign exchange market, the Cedi was at GHC 3.19 pesewes while at forex bureaus, the rate of the Cedi was GHC 3.80peswes.
According to Deputy Minister for Finance, Mrs. Mornah Quartey, it will take some time for traders and other SMEs to adhere to the strengthening of the cedi and effect changes in the prices at which their goods are sold for.
“…in economics and even in the market and the real world whenever something happens, it takes some time before the effect is felt so there is a timeline…for the SMEs there will be a time lag before the effect will show.”
Business World (with notes from citifmonline)