The Bank of Ghana has scaled back its size and frequency of foreign exchange intervention in the forex market.
The Central Bank, during the second quarter of 2025, intervened heavily in the forex market (over US$2.0 billion), a situation that the International Monetary Fund expressed concern about and urged the regulator to proceed with caution.
As of 29th July, 2025, the total foreign exchange forward sales in July 2025 stood at US$822.8 million, 53.6% lower than June 2025. The Bank of Ghana was absent from the market on 25th and 29th July 2025, the first absence since April.
This resulted in a tighter forex supply with a cumulative US dollar Ghana cedi depreciation of 1.7% post-IMF Board approval.
IC Research, a leading financial economic research said, “In view of the need to avert a protracted over-valued FX [foreign exchange] rate and close the arbitrage gap in the market, we expect the BOG [Bank of Ghana] to continue the gradual softening of its FX market presence”.
It believes this will likely culminate in a non-disruptive uptick in the interbank US dollar Ghana cedi rate to between GH¢10.45 and GH¢11.45 to a dollar (midpoint: GH¢10.95/USD) by the end of 2025.
Meanwhile, IC Research says the Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) appreciation suggests a likely corrective depreciation ahead, albeit modest.
Accordingly, the sharp appreciation of the Ghanaian cedi in the first half of 2025 has created multiple foreign exchange rates, with the interbank level at mid-GH¢10/US dollar, while the retail rate was quoted around GH¢12.0/US dollar.
“Our analysis of Ghana’s FX [foreign exchange] trend suggests a sharp appreciation of the real exchange rate as the REER index declined sharply by 31.3% in six months of 2025 to 92.7 percentage points in June 2025”.
The sharp appreciation of the real exchange rate began in April 2025 and deepened in the subsequent two months to June 2025, aligning with the appreciation of the nominal bilateral forex rates.