- GFIM Turnover Eases, but T-bills Keep the Market Anchored as Investors Stay Defensive
Trading on the Ghana Fixed Income Market softened last week, but the underlying structure of demand remained clear: investors are still clustering around Treasury bills while approaching the bond curve more selectively.
Based on the GFIM Wrap for April 13 to April 17, total market turnover came in at GH¢8.70bn, down 18.33% from GH¢10.65bn in the previous week. That decline points to a slower overall market, but not necessarily a weaker one. Rather, it reflects a market still trading with caution, favouring liquidity, shorter duration and clearer rollover visibility.
Treasury bills remained the market’s anchor, accounting for GH¢5.78bn of weekly volume, slightly above the GH¢5.58bn recorded the week before. In effect, even as total GFIM activity fell, the short end continued to absorb the bulk of investor interest, reinforcing the view that the market is still more comfortable funding the sovereign on short tenors than extending aggressively along the curve.
That preference was also visible in the government’s latest primary auction. At Tender 2003, the Government of Ghana raised about GH¢4.09bn against a target of GH¢4.89bn, with the strongest demand again concentrated in the 91-day bill, which drew GH¢2.56bn in bids and saw GH¢2.54bn accepted. The 182-day bill attracted GH¢771.16 million, of which GH¢758.04 million was accepted, while the 364-day bill saw GH¢1.16bn tendered but only GH¢790.95 million taken.
That outcome matters for how the secondary market should be read. It suggests that Ghana’s fixed-income investors remain liquid and willing to deploy, but are doing so on terms that still favour caution. The sovereign is being funded, but with clear duration sensitivity.
In the secondary market, trading in DDEP bonds fell sharply to about GH¢1.64bn from GH¢3.44bn the previous week, while new Government of Ghana bonds dropped to GH¢48.25 million from GH¢87.19 million. Sell-buy-back trades also declined to GH¢1.21bn from GH¢1.52bn. That broad pullback in bond-market activity suggests that, outside bills, participants are becoming more discriminating about where and how they deploy capital.
The composition of flows within the bond segment is equally instructive. Activity in DDEP paper remained concentrated in a few pockets of the curve, with the 4-year DDEP bond and 7-year DDEP bond carrying a large share of turnover. That tells its own story: investors are not abandoning bonds altogether, but they are focusing on specific maturities where pricing and liquidity appear more compelling.
Yields on parts of the curve also edged higher, reinforcing the market’s cautious posture. In the weekly GFIM wrap, the 4-year yield rose to 10.33% from 9.97%, the 5-year to 9.70% from 9.55%, the 6-year to 10.43% from 10.10%, and the 7-year new bond to 12.27% from 12.17%. The 7-year DDEP yield also climbed to 13.15% from 12.77%. Some segments softened, including the 8-year, but the broader message is that the curve is not yet moving in a uniformly bullish direction.
That aligns with the primary market’s pricing discipline. The government did not accept all bids at the latest T-bill sale, particularly at the longer end, indicating a continued attempt to restrain borrowing costs rather than chase volume at any price. The weighted average interest rates for the week of April 20 to 24 were 4.95% for the 91-day bill, 6.91% for the 182-day bill and 10.13% for the 364-day bill.
Corporate securities remained marginal in the broader market picture, with weekly turnover of only about GH¢24.7 million, down from GH¢29.3 million a week earlier. That leaves the GFIM story still overwhelmingly one of sovereign paper, with the real debate centred on where along the government curve investors are most willing to take risk.
Our (NorvanReports) sharper reading from last week’s market is therefore not simply that turnover fell. It is that Ghana’s fixed-income market is still functioning with a distinctly defensive bias. Treasury bills are doing the heavy lifting, bond trading is more selective, and investors remain unwilling to stretch duration indiscriminately.
For the government, that is both reassuring and constraining. There is still enough domestic liquidity to secure large funding volumes, but the market continues to signal that confidence is strongest where maturities are shortest. Until that changes more decisively, the GFIM will remain a market defined less by exuberance than by disciplined caution.
