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Ghana’s currency, the cedi, will gain 2 percent against the dollar in 2011 after the West African nation starts exporting oil, Access Bank Plc forecast.
“Next year I’m seeing it around 1.44 after oil sales begin,” Kwabena Owusu, a trader with the Accra office of Access Bank, said in a phone interview today.
Ghana is due to begin pumping oil from its offshore Jubilee field tomorrow.
The cedi was trading at 1.4680 to the dollar at 1:44 p.m. Accra time, down 0.2 percent since 9:02 a.m., according to Access Bank and Bloomberg data. Demand for dollars to finance oil and gas imports ahead of Jubilee production continued to put pressure on the cedi, he said.
Speculation that the Bank of Ghana may sell dollars tomorrow at a rate below 1.44 to the dollar hadn’t eased pressure on the cedi, Owusu said.
