The Bank of Ghana has cut the main policy rate from 18 to 16 per cent, hoping banks will reduce their rates too, helping to restore credit growth to the economy.
The bank is keen to push falling inflation down further. Annual inflation stood at 18 per cent in October, falling each month to 16.9, 15.9 and 14.8 per cent in January. The target range is 7.5 – 11.5 per cent. Read more
The Ghanaian central bank has all but declared war on the high interest rates charged by banks to consumers, and is threatening measures such as interest rate caps to bring them down.
Although the central bank’s base rate is 18 per cent – down 50bp in November – the country’s banks are charging average rates of about 30 per cent. The central bank has criticised the stickiness of the interest rates – banks are quick to raise them but slow to let them fall. Read more
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Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS
Michael Steen, Frankfurt bureau chief, covers the ECB and the eurozone's economies. He joined the Financial Times in 2007 as Amsterdam correspondent and later worked as a front page news editor in London. Before joining the FT, he spent nine years as a correspondent at Reuters, mostly in foreign postings that included a previous stint in Frankfurt, as well as Moscow, Kiev and central Asia. He read German and Russian at Cambridge.RSS
Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS
Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS
Claire Jones is Money Supply economics team writer, based in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal and CentralBanking.com. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS
