The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has finally given a timeline to honour outstanding bonds which matured on February 6 for which government defaulted.

According to him, all outstanding coupons will be paid after February 21.

“Settlements will be made after Tuesday, February 21 and then we can begin to look at processing everybody’s [bonds],” Finance Minister assured the pensioner individual bondholders on Friday when they met to thank him for exempting them from the debt exchange programme.

Explaining the reason for the delay in payment, he pointed out that the processing of coupon payments on bonds was delayed due to the settlement period for the programme.

He, however, reiterated that the government is working to ensure that every bondholder is paid their coupons and principal upon maturity of their bonds and urged the bondholders to remain calm.

“But let nobody have any inkling that anybody is going to be punished for whatever reason. All coupons will be attended to the same way in which the contracts were signed.

“We are in a difficult situation that is why we are doing the debt exchange programme and so we hope that the percentage of bonds signed onto the programme will bring down our interest on debts and give us the fiscal space to honour whatever commitments we have with our bonds,” he said.

This comes in the wake of Individual bondholders piling pressure on the Finance Ministry to pay the over GH¢4 billion in interest and principal on which the Ministry defaulted.

The Individual Bondholder’s Forum dispatched a letter to the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta demanding the payment of outstanding bonds that matured on February 6.

The Individual Bondholders Association of Ghana has taken it a step further. A delegation from the association was at the Police Headquarters on Monday to serve a formal notice of an impending 5-day protest.

The protest is expected to start from February 20 to 24.

The Individual bondholders will be picketing at Black Star Square.

Per the agreement, a group of about 30 or 50 individual bondholders will be escorted to the Finance Ministry to present a petition and back to the square.

On his part, a private legal practitioner and convener, Martin Kpebu stated that government should not only honour its promise to bondholders but should also exempt individual bondholders from the Debt Exchange Programme.

According to him, picketing for five days will galvanize more support for the cause of the group to push for an exemption.

The exemption protest, he said is a cause for which individual bondholders must win at all costs.