The Bank of Ghana has clarified scrutiny regarding discrepancies in remittance inflow figures reported by the World Bank and its own consolidated statements of foreign exchange receipts and payments.
Concerns were raised after comparing the World Bank’s reported $20.7 billion in remittances flowing into Ghana from 2018 to 2022 with the $9.5 billion reported by the Auditor General’s reports on the Bank of Ghana’s consolidated statements for the same period.
This discrepancy led to allegations of underreporting by the Central Bank.
In an exclusive interview with Channel One Business, the Director of Communications at the Bank of Ghana, Bernard Otabil, explained that the difference in reporting scope is the primary reason for the higher figures reported by the World Bank compared to those reported by the Bank of Ghana.
“The lack of understanding of how the BOP because I believe that the figures that is being put out there is the data that they have captured, or they have picked from the BOP that’s published by us.
“The BOP figures that you see is a net position including both inflows and outflows but if you look at the inflows component which we do have, only the inflows that the world bank is capturing, it is largely aligned, there’s no problem there.
“If you don’t understand the data source and you give a misleading statement to that effect, it is quite unfortunate.