Public Debt Stock Now ¢145bn

By Justice Dzido On May 21, 2018

The country’s debt stock has reached ¢145 billion ending February 2018, the Bank of Ghana has indicated in its latest Summary of Economic and Financial Data released last Friday.

However, when this debt is expressed as a percentage of the value of the economy which is said to be a little over Gh¢200 billion, then the debt –to-GDP stands at 60 percent.

This represents about 9.8 percent reduction from the country’s position of 69.8% at the end of December 2017.

The development can be attributed to what some are describing as “expansion” of the economy over the past months or the strong growth recorded.

Details of the debt stock

The report showed that from December 2017 to the end of February the debt stock in “nominal terms” went up by ¢2.5 billion from January to February 2018.

It’s not clear for now might have caused the increase, whether it was as a result of fresh borrowings or the cedi’s marginal depreciation might have caused this increase.

According to the data, External debt ending February 2018 stood at ¢17.4 billion, in dollar terms and ¢76.9 billion when converted into the local currency.

This showed that, it has gone up marginally compared to the ¢75.8 billion in December 2017. In terms of Debt-to-GDP for the External debt, it stood at 31.8 percent.

Domestic debt stood at ¢68.2 billion, representing a Debt-to-GDP ratio of 28.2 percent. Now the increment of the debt stock in dollar terms was about $1.1 billion and ¢1.5 billion for the domestic debt.

Government’s borrowing

According to government’s issuance calendar for the first half of this year, it borrowed about ¢22.4 billion through bonds and Treasury bills.

However, only ¢4.6 billion can be classified as fresh borrowings which were used to meet government’s financing needs.

The remaining ¢17.8 billion was used to finance debts that were maturing or “rollovers”. The calendar showed that it took ¢11.3 billion in the second half of this year and ¢11.1 billion in the second quarter of this year.

Source: Myjoyonline