A Financial Analyst with the Dalex Finance, Mr Joe Jackson, has welcomed the re-appointment of Dr Ernest Addison as Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG).

Mr Jackson told Johnnie Hughes on 3FM Tuesday, February 2 that Dr Addison was bold enough to have tackled the rot in the banking sector by cleaning up that portion of the local economy, something he said, Dr Addison’s predecessors could not do in spite of the facts available to them.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has reappointed Dr Addison as the Governor of the BoG for another four-year term.

The appointment takes effect from March 30, 2021, pending the constitutionally required consultation with the yet to be re-constituted Council of State.
But the Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA) has said it will petition the President to drop him as the Governor.

ASEPA in a statement by its Executive Director, Mr. Mensah Thompson, on Tuesday, 2 February 2021, said: “Dr. Addison, who served as Governor of the central bank between 2017 and 2021, was at the centre of the reckless and illegal collapse of some banks and financial institutions”.

They also claimed that Dr Addison violated “the Banking Act with impunity. It was his conduct as Governor that created the environment for the unprecedented collapse of the securities sub-sector.”

However, Mr Joe Jackson dismissed their claims saying, the cleanup exercise was necessary.

“This is the governor who was bold and courageous. This is the governor who took the responsibility for the financial cleanup that the predecessors had been running away from.

“Successive governors Dr. Henry Kofi Wampah and Dr. Abdul Nashiru Issahaku knew the extent of the rot in the system but didn’t do anything about it.

“You may say Addison was forced into it but he took responsibility. You may disagree with some of the events but you can’t disagree with his courage.

“Under his watch, the cedi has been stable. Between 2017 and 2020 the annual depreciation is 8.40 per cent. Do you know what it was before 2013 and 2016? It was 22.24 per cent, almost three times. That you can’t give a dog a bad name and hang it. When things are good we have to give him credits.”

“You can’t argue that the cleanup was necessary, you can’t argue about the fact that the cleanup was done and we needed a bold and stubborn governor to carry it out.”

He added “Let’s give him some credits. If there is anything I will the Governor for on his balance sheets, it is the fact that he has not done enough to recover that huge outlay of funds from the perpetrators of the financial sector mess. I am one of the people who have always been screaming that people must be held accountable, we must recover the money, the recovery has been horrendous.”

In March 2017, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo forwarded Dr Addison’s name to the Council of State for consideration and approval as the governor of the Central Bank.

He was subsequently approved and then appointed as the governor on 1 April 2017.

Dr Addison, after completing his doctorate at McGill, returned to Ghana and joined the Bank of Ghana in 1994 as an economist. He rose through the ranks to become the Deputy Chief and Head of the Economic Analysis and Policy Division of the Research Department.

He was a member of several committees including the Open Market Operations Committee, Money Market Auction Committee and the Editorial Committee and also secretary to the Financial Programme Implementation Committee and the Financial Policies Committee.

He chaired an Economic Community of West African States Task Force set up by the Authority of Heads of State of ECOWAS to perform feasibility studies culminating in the setting up of the West African Monetary Institute.

Dr Addison served as the chief economist with the West African Monetary Institute from 2000 to 2003.

Prior to leaving the Bank of Ghana, he worked under Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, who was then its governor and later became Vice-President of Ghana.

In 2012, Addison was a lead economist at the African Development Bank’s Southern African Resource Centre in Pretoria, South Africa.