The Central Bank has depleted its Special Drawing Rights holdings with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) SDR holdings with the IMF as at the end of the first quarter of 2021 stood at Ghs 60.13 million ($10.3 million).
But a perusal of the BoG’s Statistical Bulletin for April 2021 by norvanreports, revealed that the Bank’s SDR holdings with the IMF had been diminished with the Bank possibly being indebted to the IMF.
The BoG had used up its SDR holdings of Ghs 60.13 million ($10 million) and is now indebted to the IMF by some Ghs 7.18 million ($1.2 million).
Compared to Q4 2020, the BoG’s SDR holdings decreased by some Ghs 88.18 million ($15.1 million), as the total SDR holdings at end-December 2020 stood at Ghs 148.31 million ($25.6 million).
Prior to that, the Bank’s holdings declined by some $16.6 million from Ghs 242.39 million ($42.2 million) to Ghs 148.31 million ($25.6 million) within the space of one month – November 2020 to December 2020.
Special Drawing Rights (SDR) are supplementary foreign exchange reserve assets defined and maintained by the International Monetary Fund.
SDRs are units of account for the IMF, and not a currency per se. They represent a claim to currency held by IMF member countries for which they may be exchanged
Latest data indicate that the IMF’s SDR has an exchange rate of 0.70 to the dollar.
Per the BoG’s Statistical Bulletin for April 2021, foreign securities of the Bank as at the end of April amounted to Ghs 38 billion, a significant increase of Ghs 7 billion from the January 2021 value of Ghs 31 billion.
Other foreign assets of the BoG such as foreign currency and balance with banks also recorded a significant increase of Ghs 5 billion ending the month of April with a value of Ghs 15 billion from a value of Ghs 10 billion in January.
Gold and ‘other assets’ held by the BoG, declined marginally in value from Ghs 2.16 billion to Ghs 2.15 billion and Ghs 250 million to Ghs 249 million at end-April 2021 respectively.
