Ghana Dollar Drought Crushes Traders as Bank Hoards Cash
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Sadiq Abubakar is seeing his hopes of an annual bonus fade as Ghana’s central bank hoards dollars, cutting foreign-exchange trading to the least in almost three years and sending the cedi to an all-time low.
The 32-year-old dealer at International Commercial Bank Ltd. in the capital, Accra, says he has met just 40 percent of his revenue target this year and hasn’t traded U.S. currency on the interbank market since June 1. Purchases of foreign exchange among lenders fell an annual 17 percent in the second quarter to $1.86 billion, the lowest since the third quarter of 2010, according to Bank of Ghana data compiled by Bloomberg.