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Bloomberg
Ghana’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time in more than five years after inflation slowed to the lowest rate since 2014.
The Bank of Ghana cut the rate by 50 basis points to 25.5 percent, Governor Abdul Nashiru Issahaku told reporters on Monday in the capital, Accra. Five of the six economists in a Bloomberg survey forecast the rate would be reduced and one said it would be kept unchanged at 26 percent.
Inflation has been outside the central bank’s target band of 6 percent to 10 percent band for almost four years even as price growth slowed to 15.8 percent in October, the lowest rate since July 2014. The economy will probably expand 4.1 percent this year, according to government forecasts. The risks to the economic outlook outweigh the threat of faster price growth, Issahaku said.
Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama is campaigning for another term in office as he leads the National Democratic Congress to polls scheduled for Dec. 7 against background of slow economic growth and inflation that’s still in double digits. The West Africa economy is in the second year of an almost $1 billion loan-program with the IMF after it turned to the Washington-based lender in April 2015 when lower prices for its gold, cocoa and oil exports caused debt to balloon and the currency to decline.