- Bank stocks drive GSE to a powerful first-quarter advance
Ghana’s stock market extended its remarkable run in March, with banking names at the centre of a rally that has pushed the Ghana Stock Exchange deeper into breakout territory and underscored a broader re-rating of domestic financial assets. By the end of the month, the GSE Composite Index had climbed to 13,060.13, delivering a 48.91 per cent year-to-date gain, while the Financial Stocks Index rose to 7,986.84, up 71.86 per cent over the same period.
The tone of the official summary was unambiguously upbeat. The report said the equity market had “maintained its upward momentum” by the close of March, with both headline indices posting strong gains. That momentum did not just lead to price appreciation. Trading activity also quickened sharply, with the number of transactions reaching 117,104, representing an 852.07 per cent increase over the previous year.
March’s biggest winners reflected a decisive tilt towards financials, but not exclusively so. Republic Bank (Ghana) PLC led the monthly gainers with a 97.07 per cent rise, followed by Standard Chartered Bank Ghana at 82.84 per cent, Ghana Oil Company at 80.23 per cent, Enterprise Group at 57.35 per cent, and Cocoa Processing Company at 57.14 per cent. Also among the top gainers were Benso Palm Plantation, Clydestone Ghana, Ecobank Transnational, Access Bank Ghana, and Guinness Ghana Breweries.
That performance suggests investors are not merely chasing isolated counters but are increasingly discriminating in favour of companies seen as offering either earnings recovery, sectoral resilience, or valuation catch-up. The dominance of financial stocks in particular points to renewed confidence in the banking segment’s recovery story, with the Financial Stocks Index now outpacing the broader market by a wide margin.
Even so, the rally was not universal. The month’s laggards included Scancom, Ecobank Ghana, TotalEnergies Marketing Ghana, SIC Insurance, Fan Milk, CalBank, GCB Bank, and Societe Generale Ghana, with the latter posting the steepest decline at 37.60 per cent. The mixed performance beneath the headline indices is a reminder that, despite the market’s bullish tone, investors are still repricing counters unevenly rather than lifting all boats indiscriminately.
Liquidity figures further underlined the scale of the market’s expansion. The GSE reported that 193.8 million shares were traded in March, with total value reaching about GH¢1.093 billion, representing a 782.86 per cent increase in volume and a 441.40 per cent increase in value compared with the same period last year. On a cumulative basis, the market recorded 562.6 million shares traded worth GH¢2.79 billion in the first quarter, equivalent to year-on-year growth of 817.13 per cent in volume and 489.15 per cent in value.
The report put it plainly: “The market recorded a year-to-date cumulative volume of 562,580,868 shares valued at GHS2,787,609,944.05,” a pace of activity that points to a much deeper market than the one seen a year earlier. For investors, that matters almost as much as the index level itself. A rising market can be dismissed as a thinly traded spike; a rising market with expanding turnover is harder to ignore.
Beyond equities, the Ghana Fixed Income Market also turned in a robust performance. The exchange said fixed-income volume traded for March stood at 35.84 billion, marking a 77.13 per cent increase from the same month last year, even though it was 13.92 per cent lower than the previous month. Year-to-date volume reached 114.39 billion, which was 93.08 per cent more than the 59.24 billion traded over the same period in 2025.
The composition of that turnover is also instructive. According to the report, Treasury bills accounted for 43.25 per cent of total volume traded, while government notes and bonds contributed 55.09 per cent and corporate bonds just 1.66 per cent. In other words, the fixed-income market remains overwhelmingly sovereign-led, but the sheer scale of activity suggests that investors continue to find Ghana cedi debt instruments attractive within the current rate environment.
Taken together, the March data paint a picture of a domestic capital market enjoying an unusually strong first quarter, led by financial stocks and supported by vigorous turnover across both equities and fixed income. Market capitalisation rose to GH¢243.73 billion by the end of March, up from GH¢235.74 billion in February, adding to the sense that the bourse is enjoying not simply a short-term burst of enthusiasm but a broader expansion in market value.
