The Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) Special Drawing Rights (SDR) holdings with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) decreased by $16.6 million in 2020.
IMF SDR holdings of the BoG at end-November 2020 stood at Ghs 242.39 million ($42.2 million), but then declined to Ghs 148 million ($25.6 million) at end-December 2020.
BoG’s Ghs 148 million ($25.6 million) SDR holdings for end-December 2020 when compared to that of end-December 2019, fell by Ghs 39 million ($6.7 million) representing a 20.8 percentage points decrement in SDR holdings on a year-on-year basis.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis – end-November and end-December 2020 – it represents a decline of 38.8 percentage points.
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
The IMF’s SDR has an exchange rate of 1.38 to the dollar.
Foreign securities, which also forms part of the foreign asset mix of the Central Bank declined from Ghs 28.1 billion in December 2019 to Ghs 27.6 billion in December 2020.
Other foreign assets such as foreign currency and balance with banks, gold and ‘other assets’ held by the BoG, however, recorded impressive growth on both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter basis.
Gold assets held by the Central Bank at end-December 2020 was Ghs 2.1 billion from the end-December 2019 figure of Ghs 1.6 billion.
Foreign currencies with banks increased to Ghs 13.3 billion at end-December 2020 from the previous year figure of Ghs 10.1 billion at end-December 2019.
The value of ‘other’ foreign assets expanded from Ghs 183 million to Ghs 247 million for the period under review.
Overall, the total value of the BoG’s foreign assets as at end-December 2020 and as contained in the BoG’s Statistical Bulletin for December 2020, amounted to Ghs 43.5 billion ($7.5 billion).
An increase of some Ghs 3.28 billion from the end-December 2019 figure of Ghs 40.2 billion.
