- Secured Credit Jumps 73.40% To GH¢31.48bn as Construction Borrowing Explodes – BoG
Ghana’s secured credit market expanded sharply in the second quarter of 2026, with the value of registered loans rising 73.40% year on year to GH¢31.48bn, even as the number of security-interest registrations fell by nearly one-third.
The divergence points to a market in which fewer registered transactions are carrying substantially larger values, driven primarily by commercial banks and a dramatic increase in lending to construction, services and large enterprises.
The Bank of Ghana’s Collateral Registry Quarterly Brief for Q2 2026 describes the period as one of “mixed results” across key indicators, but the underlying numbers show a significant shift in the scale and concentration of secured lending.
The number of security-interest registrations fell to 92,033 in Q2 2026 from 135,721 in the corresponding quarter of 2025, a decline of 32.20%, with Savings and Loans companies responsible for much of the contraction.
Registrations by those institutions dropped from 119,649 to 68,871, representing a 42.40% fall, while total registrations were also 4.50% lower than the 96,343 recorded in the first quarter of 2026.
Yet the value of secured credit moved sharply in the opposite direction, suggesting that the contraction in registration volumes was concentrated among smaller-value transactions while larger loans expanded.
The value of secured credit advanced and registered with the Collateral Registry reached GH¢31.48bn, compared with GH¢18.15bn in Q2 2025 and GH¢19.98bn in the previous quarter. That represents growth of 73.40% year on year and 57.50% quarter on quarter, a substantial acceleration within only three months.
The Bank of Ghana attributed the year-on-year increase mainly to banks, which remained the dominant source of high-value secured credit and accounted for almost two-thirds of the total registered value.
Banks registered GH¢19.86bn of secured credit during the quarter, equivalent to 63.10% of the total and 36.60% higher than the GH¢14.54bn recorded a year earlier. Other lenders accounted for GH¢8.29bn, or 26.30%, while Rural and Community Banks contributed GH¢1.71bn and Savings and Loans companies GH¢1.25bn.
The distribution underlines the degree to which the surge in secured credit was being driven not by the lender categories responsible for most registrations, but by commercial banks carrying much larger transactions.
Within the banking system itself, foreign-controlled institutions remained dominant. They registered GH¢14.12bn of secured credit, representing 71.10% of all secured lending by banks, while Ghanaian-owned banks accounted for GH¢5.74bn, or 28.90%.
The domestic banks, however, recorded the faster growth rate, with secured credit rising 112.40% from GH¢2.70bn in Q2 2025, compared with a 19.30% increase among foreign-controlled banks.
That contrast is significant because it suggests indigenous banks are expanding their presence rapidly even though foreign-controlled lenders retain the commanding share by value.
Quarter on quarter, Ghanaian-owned banks increased secured lending by 19.70% from GH¢4.79bn, while foreign-controlled banks rose 22.20% to GH¢14.12bn.
The data therefore point to a banking market where domestic lenders are growing faster from a smaller base, but the largest secured transactions are still overwhelmingly being financed by foreign-controlled institutions.
The most striking sectoral development came from construction, which absorbed GH¢9.89bn of registered secured credit during the quarter, equivalent to 31.40% of the total. That was almost ten times the GH¢989.2mn recorded in Q2 2025, representing year-on-year growth of 900.10%, and more than double the GH¢4.00bn registered in the first quarter.
The scale of the jump makes construction the clearest single explanation for why overall secured lending values surged even as the total number of security registrations declined.
Commerce and finance was the second-largest recipient, with GH¢8.10bn, up 25.90% year on year, while services attracted GH¢4.36bn after expanding 154.80% from GH¢1.71bn.
Mining and quarrying received GH¢3.34bn, manufacturing GH¢1.41bn and electricity, gas and water GH¢1.13bn, while agriculture, forestry and fishing accounted for only GH¢784.9mn.
The sectoral distribution shows that the increase in secured credit was concentrated heavily in construction, commercial activity and services rather than being evenly spread across productive sectors.
There were also sharp quarter-on-quarter shifts beneath those headline numbers. Mining and quarrying secured credit increased 645.80% from GH¢448.4mn in Q1, electricity, gas and water rose 716.10% from GH¢138.7mn, while information and communications jumped 914.60% from a very small base of GH¢8.9mn to GH¢90.3mn.
Agriculture moved in the opposite direction, falling 29.30% from the previous quarter, while cottage industries declined 25.50%, illustrating that the credit expansion did not reach all sectors equally.
Borrower size tells a similar story of concentration. Large enterprises received GH¢13.76bn, or 43.90% of all registered secured credit, while small and medium-sized enterprises received GH¢3.85bn, equivalent to 12.20% of the total.
SME secured credit was 28.90% higher than a year earlier but fell sharply by 48.20% quarter on quarter, from GH¢7.43bn in Q1, suggesting that the overall expansion in credit during the period was disproportionately captured by larger borrowers and other categories rather than SMEs.
The report’s gender breakdown exposes an even sharper asymmetry between the number of borrowers and the value of credit received.
Female borrowers and female-owned businesses accounted for 75,465, or 82.80%, of the 91,098 secured credit transactions recorded by gender, yet women and female-owned businesses received only about GH¢3.06bn in value.
Male borrowers and male-owned businesses accounted for 15,633 transactions but received roughly GH¢19.37bn, indicating that significantly larger average credit values were concentrated among male borrowers and male-owned enterprises.
The composition is particularly revealing when ownership categories are separated. Female individuals received GH¢1.34bn, while female-owned businesses received GH¢1.72bn, compared with GH¢1.77bn for male individuals and GH¢17.60bn for male-owned businesses.
Female-owned businesses nevertheless recorded a striking 234.20% increase in secured credit from GH¢514.8mn a year earlier, showing that their borrowing grew rapidly even though the absolute value remained far below that of male-owned enterprises.
Geography represents another major concentration risk. Greater Accra alone accounted for GH¢24.50bn, or 77.80%, of the value of secured credit registered during the quarter, while Ashanti followed with GH¢3.40bn, representing 10.80%.
Western, Eastern and Central together accounted for only 5.50%, while a further GH¢1.10bn, or 3.40%, was advanced by lenders domiciled outside Ghana to borrowers in the country and secured with assets located domestically.
The volume distribution, however, tells a different regional story. Ashanti recorded the highest number of security-interest registrations at 27,627, or 30.00% of the national total, followed by Greater Accra with 21,736, equivalent to 23.60%.
That contrast, Accra dominating the value of lending while Ashanti leads in transaction volumes, implies that the average secured credit transaction in Greater Accra is considerably larger, reflecting the concentration of corporate headquarters, large enterprises, financial institutions and major commercial projects in the capital.
The collateral underlying Ghana’s secured lending market is also overwhelmingly movable rather than property-based. Of 117,428 assets registered as collateral during the quarter, 92,878, or 79.10%, were movable assets only, while immovable assets accounted for just 2.60% and combinations of movable and immovable assets made up 18.20%.
Cash collateral dominated with 80,673 registrations, representing 68.70% of all collateral, followed by inventories and stock of goods at 8.50%, company or business assets at 7.90%, and consumer or household goods at 3.90%.
The heavy use of movable collateral is central to the economic case for Ghana’s Collateral Registry because it allows borrowers without traditional landed property to pledge cash, inventory, receivables, equipment and other business assets.
In principle, that broadens the range of firms and households able to access secured credit and reduces lenders’ dependence on land and buildings as the primary basis for risk mitigation.
Yet the dominance of cash collateral, more than two-thirds of all registered collateral, also suggests that lenders continue to place considerable weight on highly liquid security rather than relying primarily on productive assets such as plant, equipment, receivables or intellectual property.
Search activity on the Collateral Registry Application System provides another indication that lenders are using the platform more intensively for due diligence.
Searches increased 13.90% year on year to 19,518 and were 8.70% higher than in the first quarter, with Savings and Loans companies accounting for 12,397 searches and Rural Banks 5,447.
The Bank of Ghana said the increase reflected “stronger use of the Registry’s platform by lenders and other stakeholders”, which it linked to better credit due diligence, reduced information asymmetry and intensified sensitisation and training.
Another striking development was the enormous increase in discharged security interests. Discharges rose from 14,183 in Q2 2025 to 107,836 in Q2 2026, a more than sevenfold increase, while Savings and Loans companies alone accounted for 102,229 of the total compared with just 8,709 a year earlier.
The Bank of Ghana linked the increase to improved settlement of secured obligations and intensified sensitisation, while noting that the Borrowers and Lenders Act requires security interests to be discharged once the underlying secured obligations have been satisfied.
The Registry also issued 72 Memoranda of No Objection certificates, up 53.20% from 47 a year earlier and 41.20% from 51 in the first quarter. These certificates are part of the statutory process through which lenders seek to realise registered security interests, with Savings and Loans companies receiving 28 certificates and banks 20 during the quarter.
Rising realisation activity alongside sharply higher discharges indicates that the Registry is being used not merely to record collateral at the point of lending but also across the full lifecycle of secured obligations, from registration through settlement or enforcement.
Taken together, the quarter presents a more complicated picture than the headline 73.40% increase in secured credit might initially suggest.
Credit is expanding rapidly by value, but registrations are falling; large enterprises dominate borrower value, construction has absorbed nearly one-third of all secured credit, foreign-controlled banks account for more than seven-tenths of bank lending, and Greater Accra captures almost four-fifths of the national value.
Those concentrations do not negate the expansion, but they show that the central policy question is increasingly not simply whether secured credit is growing, but who is receiving it, in which sectors and regions, and against what forms of collateral.
For Ghana’s credit market, the figures point to a system becoming deeper in monetary value while remaining uneven in its distribution. The Collateral Registry is evidently supporting larger volumes of secured finance and providing lenders with a framework for registering, searching, discharging and ultimately realising security interests, but the benefits are still concentrated heavily among large borrowers, metropolitan activity and bank-financed transactions.
The next test will be whether this expanding secured-transactions architecture can translate its strong headline growth into broader access for SMEs, female-owned businesses, agriculture and enterprises outside Greater Accra the areas where the economic case for movable collateral could ultimately matter most.
