Foreign exchange dealers want freer rein

Foreign exchange dealers have urged Ghana’s central bank to scrap a measure requiring their clients to give their names and addresses when buying or selling foreign currency, ‘Ghana Review International’ reported on Friday. The periodical said members of the Ghana Association of Forex Bureaux appealed on Thursday to the Bank of Ghana to withdraw the measure because they were losing customers to parallel market operators. The Bank introduced the requirement in May, along with others aimed at curbing the depreciation of the cedi, such as limiting foreign currency sales or purchases to US $2000 a day, a measure which the bureaux also want it to scrap. The cedi fell from 2540 to the US dollar in May 1999 to 4930:1 a year later. The dollar now exchanges at 1 to 5550 cedis.