The year 2000 was a difficult year for our economy as internal and external problems culminated in a resurgence of domestic inflation, steep and an unprecedented depreciation of the Cedi against the major currencies and weak macroeconomic fundamentals.
In addition, Government’s projected inflows of project grants turned out to be too optimistic. Provisional figures show that the inflows of project grants was about a third of what was estimated.
The continued depression of the price of primary commodities on the world market constrained the country’s foreign exchange earning capacity. This led to acute shortage of foreign currency, resulting in the Cedi depreciating massively against the major currencies at the Central Bank. Foreign currency deposits with the commercial banks increased by 95.8 percent between 1999 and 2000 mainly as a result of the ailing cedi.
