admin
ABIDJAN. — Ghana’s government said it is determined to join a West African currency that will replace the France-backed CFA franc as soon as next year in eight regional countries, but it urged members of the currency union to ditch a planned peg to the euro.
Ghana’s adoption of the new currency, which is called the eco, would make it the bloc’s largest economy, ahead of neighbour Ivory Coast.
Ghana is not part of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) of mostly former French colonies that uses the CFA franc and has its own currency, the cedi.
Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara and French President Emmanuel Macron announced this month that West Africa’s monetary union had agreed to cut some financial links with Paris that have underpinned the region’s common currency since its creation soon after World War Two.
Under the deal, African countries in the bloc will not have to keep half of their reserves in the French Treasury and a French representative will no longer sit on the currency
union’s board.
“We, in Ghana, are determined to do whatever we can to enable us (to) join the Member States of UEMOA, soon, in the use of the eco, as, we believe, it will help remove trade and monetary barriers,” President Nana Akufo-Addo’s office said in a statement. — Reuters.
Online Reporter