Ghana must repay GH¢111 billion of restructured domestic bonds in 2027 and 2028, comprising GH¢58 billion in 2027 and GH¢53 billion in 2028. These are the instruments that banks, pension funds, and other investors accepted in the 2022/23 Domestic Debt Exchange.

They fall due as bullet payments on four settlement dates: the entire principal is repayable at once rather than amortising over time, which is what concentrates the risk into a handful of days.

Looking at Ghana’s debt maturity profile over the next 10 years, two features stand out. After 2028, annual debt maturities range from a manageable GH¢4.9 billion to GH¢9.3 billion a year. So the GH¢50 billion-plus maturing in 2027 and 2028 is roughly six (6) times the obligation of the largest later year and more than ten times the smallest, and together accounts for GH¢111 billion against GH¢69 billion spread across the following ten years combined.

Second, once past 2028, the profile is entirely manageable. Comprising debt servicing costs of between GH¢4.9 billion and GH¢9.3 billion a year, comfortably within routine issuance capacity. The problem is therefore not the size of Ghana’s domestic debt, but its shape, with 2027/28 presenting a huge wall to climb.

This is a refinancing problem, not a repayment problem

An obligation of this size is not settled out of tax revenue. It is refinanced—standard sovereign practice, and what Ghana should plan for as part of any robust liability management strategy. The government has begun accumulating a Sinking Fund, which held GH¢15.6 billion as of 22 July 2026 (and may be even less after the August 20th, 2026 coupon payment).

Government claims it’s on track to set aside GH¢30 billion by year-end, which should cover the February 2027 bullet payment. Beyond it, roughly GH¢25 to 30 billion of fresh issuance is required in each of the two years.

But refinancing requires a functioning fixed income market to refinance into, and Ghana does not yet have one. Turnover has recovered to pre-crisis levels, yet outright trading in government bonds has fallen from around 90 per cent of secondary market volume before the DDEP to under 10 per cent today. The April 2026 seven-year, the first long-dated domestic issue since the default, raised GH¢2.7 billion against GH¢3.1 billion of bids.

It cleared, but a 1.15 times cover on 2.4 per cent of the total financing needed is not evidence that the programme can be scaled tenfold. Reviving the market is therefore the difference between an orderly rollover and a second restructuring.

The timing is fortunate — and temporary

Ghana exited its IMF programme successfully in July 2026, and on virtually every macroeconomic measure the country is in its strongest position for a decade. Inflation has fallen from a peak above 50 per cent to around 5 per cent. The policy rate has come down by 1,300 basis points since January 2025. The cedi was the world’s best-performing currency in 2025, and the debt-to-GDP ratio has reached its 45 per cent statutory anchor years ahead of schedule.

Borrowing costs have more than halved in twelve months: five-year money now clears below 10 per cent, down from more than 30 per cent three years ago.

None of this resolves the obligation ahead. What it provides is the stable platform on which a market-based solution can be built; a platform that will not necessarily still be there in 2028. The IMF has already sanctioned a fall in the primary surplus to 0.5 per cent of GDP from 2027, and 2028 is an election year in which GH¢53 billion falls due. Fiscal capacity contracts precisely as the obligation peaks.

Where the market stands today

• The bond market has not reopened — only the bill market has. Headline GFIM turnover has recovered to pre-DDEP levels, but Treasury bills and sell/buy-back collateral trades account for roughly 90 per cent of volume. Outright dealing in government notes and bonds has fallen from around 90 per cent of turnover before the exchange to under 10 per cent today; in individual sessions, new bonds have printed as little as GH¢546,022.
• The 2022 debt exchange raised total cash obligations rather than lowering them. According to an analysis done by Black Star Analytics, total coupon-and-principal payments rose from GH¢223.8 billion to GH¢266.5 billion, with nominal principal rising from GH¢121.2 billion to GH¢167.7 billion. The weighted average coupon fell from 18.03 to 15.1 per cent, but weighted average maturity did not lengthen; it remained at six years on both measures. Essentially, the exchange postponed the problem; it did not solve it.
• The paper is locked in the hands of the institutions that were hurt by it. Central Securities Depository data at the time showed that 80.3 per cent of DDEP participation came through primary dealers — of which the Bank of Ghana alone was 16.5 per cent of the whole, with 15.7 per cent via custodians for foreign holders and 4.0 per cent through brokers. The five largest participants were the Bank of Ghana (16.5 per cent), Standard Chartered acting as custodian for foreign holders (10.0 per cent), GCB Bank (9.9 per cent), Ecobank (7.5 per cent) and Consolidated Bank Ghana (6.4 per cent), a total of 50.3 per cent between them. The ten largest accounted for 73.3 per cent. Hold-to-maturity accounting, capital forbearance and a uniform investor base mean this paper does not move.Africans & Diaspora
• The Sinking Fund is pre-borrowed liquidity, not saving. The 2026 Budget projects, on a cash basis, an overall deficit of GH¢64.2 billion (4.0 per cent of GDP) and a primary deficit of GH¢6.5 billion (0.4 per cent). There is no cash surplus to set money aside, so every cedi placed in the fund is financed by borrowing, underspending, or asset sales. The policy remains worthwhile, but only as a cash-management and signalling device, not as a war chest.
• The market has already named its price, and Ghana is not paying it. Black Star Group conducted an institutional investor survey that found 77 per cent of respondents require at least 200 basis points over the 364-day Treasury bill on new issuance. The April 2026 seven-year cleared at 12.5 per cent against a 364-day bill printing 12.99 per cent in August, a negative term premium. Half of all respondents remain “unsure, awaiting clarity from government”, and the 49 per cent who have already said yes are not numerous enough to absorb GH¢25–30 billion a year on their own.

Why a functioning bond market matters well beyond 2028

The case for reviving the market does not rest on the massive 2027/2028 maturities alone. Even without the wall, a working domestic bond market would be worthwhile to any government interested in any long-term infrastructure development and competitively priced credit.

• It restores the yield curve, the reference price for all other credit. Government yields are what banks, insurers and corporates price against. Without observable three-, five-, seven- and ten-year rates, a bank pricing a mortgage or a company pricing a bond is working from guesswork — and that uncertainty is charged back to the borrower.
• It locks in duration while duration is cheap. A ten-year bond issued today fixes the cost for a decade. A 91-day bill must be refinanced four times a year at whatever rate then prevails. With yields at decade lows, the asymmetry favours terming out now.
• It reduces rollover risk concentrated in Treasury bills. Funding the sovereign predominantly through sub-one-year paper puts it in the market every single week. That concentration is a vulnerability in itself: one uncovered auction becomes an immediate liquidity event. Cheap short money is precisely how the present maturity wall was built.
• It matches long-lived assets with long-dated liabilities. A hospital with a thirty-year working life cannot sensibly be funded with 91-day money. A bond market is the mechanism by which domestic savings finance domestic infrastructure.
• It reduces foreign-currency exposure. Cedi liabilities do not grow when the cedi weakens. In 2022, dollar liabilities did, and that is much of what turned a fiscal problem into a crisis.
• It lets pension funds and insurers match their obligations. More than GH¢90 billion of pension assets need long-dated instruments to sit against long-dated promises to retirees. Forcing that money into short paper transfers reinvestment risk onto pensioners.
• It compresses the illiquidity premium. Investors demand compensation for holding instruments they cannot exit. Once secondary trading is dependable, that premium falls, lowering the cost of every subsequent cedi borrowed by the sovereign and by corporates, whose bonds are barely one per cent of turnover.

Ten priorities

1. Launch voluntary switch auctions now, offering holders of the 2027 and 2028 maturities longer-dated paper in exchange — not in 2027, when the leverage has gone.
2. Deploy the Sinking Fund into open-market buybacks rather than holding it as idle cash.
3. Place the Sinking Fund on a statutory footing, publish its balance monthly and disclose its funding sources.
4. Publish a rolling three-year issuance calendar and adhere to it, so that investors can plan around a known supply schedule.
5. Establish five benchmark lines as new issues, beginning at three and five years, rather than reopening the restructured series.
6. Price to clear: roughly 200 to 300 basis points — two to three percentage points — over the 364-day bill, which is what investors state they require.
7. Grant a time-bound accounting exemption, so that a bank selling a single bond is not forced to revalue its entire portfolio.
8. Reactivate the interbank repo market, with the Bank of Ghana as backstop lender of securities.Africans & Diaspora
9. Impose two-way quoting obligations on primary dealers, with a maximum spread and minimum daily volume.
10. Broaden the investor base: retail from GH¢100 via mobile money, a diaspora issue, an inflation-linked tranche, and the measured return of foreign participation.

In conclusion

Ghana has roughly eighteen months of unusually favourable conditions to do two things: shrink the 2027–28 wall through voluntary switches and buybacks until the residual is a size the market can absorb, and repair the accounting and repo plumbing so bonds can trade at all.

Do both and GH¢25–30 billion a year of issuance becomes routine funding. Do neither and February 2028 becomes a refinancing event priced at 2022 risk premia.

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The author, Charles Adu Boahen, is a former Minister of State at the Ministry of Finance.

Sources

Bank of Ghana; Ministry of Finance 2026 Budget Statement and 2026 Mid-Year Fiscal Policy Review; Ghana Stock Exchange and Ghana Fixed Income Market status reports; IMF Article IV and Extended Credit Facility documentation; Fitch Ratings; Central Securities Depository DDE participation data (10 February 2023); and Black Star Analytics, “Debt Profile and Simulation” (May 2023) and “Ghana’s Bond Market 2025: From Restructuring to Recovery” (August 2025), including its institutional investor survey.

Special thanks to my dear friend Claude and the analysts at Black Star Group who ably assisted me in putting this all together. All the views expressed here are mine and mine alone.