Ghana’s debt stock increases

According to figures released by the Bank of Ghana(BoG) in its latest Summary of Economic and Financial Data show that Ghana’s debt stock increased by 21.5 percent in 2018.

By this, the country added 30.6 billion cedis to its debt stock in 2018.

The debt stock at the end of 2017 stood at 142.6 billion cedis, increasing to 173.2 billion cedis in 2018.

The government in the period raised a number of bonds including Eurobond and domestic bonds to embark on infrastructure development and also retire some maturing debts.

A breakdown of the data from the Central Bank shows that the external and domestic components of the debt in cedi terms are almost the same.

The external debt at the end of 2018 stood at 86.3 billion cedis while the domestic component hit 86.9 billion cedis.

Both figures represent 28.9 percent and 29.1 percent of GDP respectively.

External sector development

On external sector developments, total imports by February 2019 was at 2.1 billion dollars while total export in the same period was at 2.6 billion dollars.

Export of gold fetched the country 944.4 million dollars while cocoa and oil raked in 565.9 million dollars and 721.5 million dollars respectively.

On the import side, Ghana imported oil worth 380.8 million dollars while non-oil imports were at 1.8 billion dollars.

Banking Sector

In the Banking Sector, the BoG data shows that Non-Performing Loans (credit gone bad) among banks in the country reduced significantly to 18.2 percent by February 2019 compared to the same period in 2018 which was at 21.6 percent.

Total deposits in the sector grew to 71.9 billion cedis in February 2019 from 59.9 billion cedis in February 2018 while Total Assets grew to 108.9 billion cedis from 95.1 billion cedis in the same period under review.