Government US$5 billion Eurobond has been oversubscribed, Spokesperson and Economic Adviser to the Vice President, Dr. Gideon Boako has said.

However, details of the sale of the bond will be made available by the Finance Ministry.

Government was seeking to raise US$3 billion, but got about US$6 billion from the investors.

It is unclear the cost of the bond but it's likely to be between 7% and 9%.

Dr. Boako said government will however not accept all the bids submitted.

“I know there was an over subscription of the bond, but the government did not sign up for the total good value that was available. Of course, you don’t expect the government to take everything that is thrown at her.”

“So usually, you go to the bond market and you give indication of the ceiling [interest and amount] that you want, and different investors come with an over subscription or sometimes under subscription”, he said.

“But in this case, because of the confidence in the economy despite COVID-19, the international investors saw the need to subscribe to the government's bond and it was oversubscribed but the government will not take everything, thus, the total book value”, he emphasized.

Mr. Boako further said “sometimes you need to be careful to see what composition of investors are purchasing your bond.”

Ghana also became the first African country to issue a zero-coupon rated bond. With zero rated coupon bond, no interest is paid whilst it trades at a discount to its face value.

Only about US$2 billion is expected to be used to finance the budget, while the rest of funds will be used to restructure the country’s debt to reduce the impact of the interest payment on the economy. Ghana’s fiscal deficit of Gross Domestic Product is expected to narrow to 9.5% in 2021.

The lead managers for the programme were Bank of America, Citigroup, Rand Merchant Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and Standard Bank. Databank Group, Fidelity Bank, IC Securities and Cal Bank are the co-managers.