Commercial debt largely from Eurobonds constituted the largest chunk of the country’s external debt as of the end of November 2021, data from the Bank of Ghana has revealed.

The commercial debt of $16.01 billion, represented 42% of total external loans of $27.89 billion, and an increase of $3.38 billion over the previous year.

It was followed by multilateral and bilateral loans of $8.08 billion and $3.79 billion respectively.

Interestingly, both the multilateral and bilateral loans have been declining over the last couple of years. This might be due to Ghana’s position of being a lower middle income country.

Meanwhile, the external debt of the country increased by ¢23.4 billion, from ¢141.8 billion at the end of December 2020 to ¢165.1 billion as of November 2021.

The external debt also constituted 47.9% of the nation’s total public debt in November 2021.

Domestic debt went up by ¢28.09bn in 11 months of 2021

Also, the domestic debt went up by ¢28.09 billion in the 11 months of 2021 to ¢179.40 billion in November 2021.

The banking system held ¢89.64 billion of the domestic debt in November 2021, ¢12.72 billion more than what was recorded in December 2020.

The non-banking system constituted ¢60.05 billion of the domestic debt in November 2021, ¢12.72 billion more than December 2021.

Non-resident investors however held ¢29.69 billion of the domestic debt in November 2021, compared to ¢27.71 billion in December 2021.

The statistics regarding the domestic debt shows that government borrowed significantly on the domestic market in 2021.

Ghana’s total public debt however stood at ¢344.6 billion in November 2021.