- DDEP Bonds Dominate GFIM as Daily Turnover Hits GH¢3.69 billion
Trading on the Ghana Fixed Income Market remained heavily concentrated in Domestic Debt Exchange Programme securities on Friday, August 7, 2026, as total market turnover reached GH¢3.69 billion across 602 transactions.
DDEP bonds alone accounted for GH¢2.92 billion of trades from 118 transactions, representing roughly 79.18% of total market turnover for the session. Treasury bills followed with GH¢740.00 million, while activity in other fixed-income segments remained relatively modest.
The trading pattern provides another indication that restructured government bonds are becoming increasingly important to secondary-market liquidity. Investors were particularly active in selected medium-to-long-dated securities, where yields remained largely in the mid-teens.
The single most heavily traded security was the DDEP bond maturing in February 2032, which attracted GH¢1.16 billion across 35 transactions. The security closed at a yield of 15.14% and a price of 77.88, making it responsible for almost 40.00% of all DDEP turnover recorded during the session.
That concentration was followed by the February 2034 DDEP security, which recorded GH¢795.81 million in turnover across 14 trades. Its closing yield declined to 15.39% from an opening 15.63%, while the closing price stood at 73.80.
The shorter February 2027 DDEP bond also attracted significant interest, recording GH¢414.71 million across 35 transactions. Its closing yield increased to 11.47% from 11.20%, while the price ended at 98.43.
Elsewhere on the curve, the February 2031 bond recorded GH¢211.32 million in trades and closed at a yield of 14.78%, down from 14.92%. The February 2029 security generated GH¢164.52 million, while the February 2028 bond recorded GH¢157.00 million.
Those flows show that liquidity was not spread evenly across the restructured debt curve. Instead, investors concentrated substantial volumes in a handful of maturities, particularly the 2032 and 2034 securities.
That matters because headline turnover alone does not necessarily mean the entire government bond market has become equally liquid. A deep secondary market requires consistent trading across maturities, whereas the August 7 session showed that a significant share of activity remained concentrated around particular securities.
Treasury bills continued to provide the second major source of turnover, accounting for GH¢740.00 million across 478 transactions. The segment represented about 20.06% of total market activity, considerably below the contribution from DDEP bonds but still demonstrating strong investor demand for short-dated government instruments.
The most actively traded Treasury bill was the security maturing in August 2027, which recorded GH¢326.59 million across 39 transactions. It closed at a yield of approximately 12.79% and a price of 88.77.
Shorter Treasury bills traded at substantially lower yields across several maturities. Securities maturing in September and October 2026 generally offered yields ranging from around 5.96% to 6.69%, while very short-dated instruments approaching maturity were priced closer to par.
The contrast between short-term Treasury bill yields and longer DDEP yields helps explain why investors may increasingly be looking further along the curve. Where investors are comfortable assuming additional duration and sovereign risk, yields around 14.00% to 15.00% on longer-dated bonds can offer significantly higher returns than many shorter securities.
The trade-off is that longer bonds carry greater exposure to changes in interest rates and market perceptions of Ghana’s fiscal position. A decline in market yields can generate capital gains for holders, but renewed upward pressure on rates can reduce bond prices and create losses for investors who need to sell before maturity.
Old Government of Ghana notes and bonds were virtually inactive during the session, recording only GH¢92,269 in turnover from a single transaction. New government bonds recorded no outright trades despite the seven-year security carrying a closing yield of 12.37%.
Corporate bond activity was similarly thin. Only GH¢91,717 changed hands in the corporate securities segment, underscoring the continued dominance of sovereign instruments within Ghana’s fixed-income market.
The lone major corporate trade involved a Cocoa Marketing Board security maturing in August 2028. The limited activity once again highlights a longstanding structural weakness in Ghana’s capital market: companies remain far less active in the debt market than government.
Sell/buy-back transactions in government securities contributed another GH¢27.83 million across four trades. The largest transaction involved GH¢20.00 million of the February 2034 DDEP bond at a yield of 14.40%, reinforcing the importance of that maturity during the session.
The dominance of government debt has implications beyond trading volumes. When sovereign securities offer attractive yields and deep liquidity, banks, pension funds and asset managers can find them more appealing than lending to businesses or buying corporate bonds.
That can strengthen demand for government debt while making it more difficult for private companies to attract long-term capital through the domestic bond market. Developing a deeper corporate segment will therefore require not only more issuances but investors willing to accept credit risk outside the sovereign market.
For now, the most important signal from the August 7 session is the strength of DDEP liquidity. Nearly four out of every five cedis traded on GFIM went into restructured government bonds, with the 2032 security alone attracting more than GH¢1 billion.
The figures also reinforce a broader transition in Ghana’s fixed-income market. As short-term rates moderate, investors are increasingly being forced to make more deliberate decisions about duration, yield and where on the curve they are willing to take risk.
That makes individual maturities increasingly important indicators of investor sentiment. The August 7 session showed that, for now, the strongest demand is concentrated in selected DDEP bonds offering yields in the mid-teens, while Treasury bills remain liquid but no longer command the entire market.
The deeper question is whether that appetite can broaden across the curve. If it does, Ghana could gradually rebuild a more functional and liquid secondary bond market after the disruption caused by the domestic debt exchange; if it does not, high headline turnover may continue to mask a market where liquidity is concentrated in only a handful of securities.
