Ghana Implements Plan to Manage Domestic Debt

The government has formally launched Ghana's Domestic Exchange Programme as part of measures to restructure and bring the country's debt portfolio to sustainable levels, with a call on Ghanaians to support the rollout.

The programme, which commences from 2023 to 2037, would see government exchange existing domestic bonds for a set of four new ones that will mature in 2027, 2029, 2032 and 2037.

As part of the exchange, the coupons will be set at 0% in 2023, 5% in 2024 and 10% in 2025 until maturity.

Meanwhile International rating agency, Fitch, has warned of more rating downgrades of African banks in 2023, with Ghana's debt restructuring expected to affect both domestic and regional banks. According to its 2023 Outlook report, sovereign debt distress was the major risk to African banks' financial profile. It explained that African banks' credit drivers will be undermined by both global and domestic shocks in 2023.

On October 30, 2022 Ghana's President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo told the nation: "We are in a crisis, I do not exaggerate when I say so. I cannot find an example in history when so many malevolent forces have come together at the same time. But, as we have shown in other circumstances, we shall turn this crisis into an opportunity to resolve not just the short-term, urgent problems, but the long-term structural problems that have bedeviled our economy"