President John Mahama has shot down speculations the Ghana cedi will trade at four to one US dollar.

He was speaking to Ghanaian exporters on trade and economic growth.

At publication time, US$1 dollar is GHS10.23.

“Some say it’d come [down] to four [cedis to one dollar] but of course we know the true value of the cedi is not four,” President Mahama said.

He warned, “And if it went as far down as four, it’d kill all your export businesses.”

He revealed he had met with the Finance Minister, Dr Cassiel Ato Baah Forson, and the Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr Johnson Pandit Asiama, over how to find the true value of the cedi in order to safeguard the economy and stimulate trade.

“And they think that the real value of the cedi is anywhere between 10 and 12 [to a dollar]. Luckily, the forex option has brought it to just above 10 and it appears to have stabilised there. So I think that going forward, anything between 10, 11, and 12, as a band where the cedi operates, will be a fair value, both to encourage our exports, but at the same time not make imports so cheap that importers will flood our markets with toothpicks, biscuits, and coconuts and all those kinds of things,” the president underlined.

Mahama assured the business community his government would “prudently manage the economy so that you have a predictable environment in which you can make investments knowing that your return on investment would keep your businesses going”.