- GFIM Turnover Rises To GH¢1.64bn As DDEP Bonds Dominate September 4 Trading
Trading on the Ghana Fixed Income Market reached GH¢1.64 billion on September 4, with restructured government bonds emerging as the dominant source of activity as investors continued to concentrate liquidity in sovereign securities.
The market recorded 342 transactions across government bonds, Treasury bills, corporate debt and sell/buy-back transactions, according to the official GFIM trading report for Friday. Domestic Debt Exchange Programme bonds generated GH¢677.61 million, equivalent to 41.28% of total turnover, making them the single largest outright segment of the session.
Sell/buy-back transactions in government notes and bonds contributed another GH¢507.86 million, or 30.94% of overall activity, while Treasury bills accounted for GH¢357.54 million, representing 21.78%. Corporate bonds generated GH¢98.47 million, equivalent to just 6.00% of total market turnover.
Taken together, government-linked instruments accounted for approximately 94.00% of all trading value, underscoring the continued dominance of sovereign securities in Ghana’s fixed-income market. Corporate debt remains a comparatively small component despite recent efforts to deepen the market as an alternative source of long-term financing for businesses.
The strongest individual trade came from the 9.10% DDEP bond maturing on February 10, 2032, which recorded GH¢448.63 million across eight transactions. That represented 66.21% of all outright DDEP trading and 27.33% of total GFIM turnover for the day.
The security closed at a yield of 14.42%, down from an opening yield of 14.56%, with its end-of-day price rising to about GH¢80.37 per GH¢100 face value. The movement suggests comparatively strong demand for one of the longer-dated securities created under Ghana’s domestic debt restructuring.
Other DDEP activity was spread across the maturity curve. The 2035 and 2036 securities each recorded GH¢75.00 million in volume, while the February 2034 bond attracted GH¢38.50 million and the February 2031 security traded GH¢20.00 million.
The 2035 and 2036 instruments both closed at yields of 14.71%, while the 2034 bond ended at 14.73%. The clustering of yields around the mid-14.00% range across several longer maturities provides an indication of where investors are currently pricing portions of Ghana’s restructured sovereign curve.
In the sell/buy-back market, the largest transaction was concentrated in the 8.50% DDEP bond maturing in February 2028, which recorded GH¢146.46 million across seven trades. That accounted for approximately 28.84% of all sell/buy-back turnover.
The February 2027 DDEP bond generated another GH¢97.32 million in sell/buy-back activity, while the February 2032 security accounted for GH¢102.37 million. Other active maturities included the February 2029 bond at GH¢64.48 million and securities maturing in 2030, 2033 and 2034.
Sell/buy-back transactions are important because they reflect liquidity-management activity rather than conventional outright changes in ownership alone. Their significant share of Friday’s turnover indicates that a substantial portion of market activity continues to involve short-term funding and securities-financing transactions around government debt.
Excluding sell/buy-back transactions, outright trading amounted to approximately GH¢1.13 billion, or 69.06% of the day’s total activity. Within that outright market, DDEP bonds remained comfortably ahead of Treasury bills and corporate securities.
Treasury-bill turnover reached GH¢357.54 million across 238 transactions, making the short-term government market the most active segment by number of trades even though it ranked behind DDEP bonds by value.
The most heavily traded bill was the security maturing on August 23, 2027, which attracted GH¢84.00 million across two transactions. It closed at a yield of approximately 10.54% and a price of GH¢90.73, accounting for 23.49% of all Treasury-bill turnover.
Other significant activity was recorded in bills maturing in August and June 2027, reflecting continued investor appetite across the longer end of the Treasury-bill maturity spectrum. The Treasury market nevertheless displayed a wide range of yields, largely reflecting the remaining maturities of individual instruments rather than a single uniform funding rate.
Corporate bond activity was unusually concentrated. Of the GH¢98.47 million traded in corporate securities, approximately GH¢98.27 million, or 99.80%, was accounted for by two Ghana Cocoa Board bonds. The 13.00% COCOBOD bond maturing in August 2028 generated GH¢63.31 million across 14 transactions, while the August 2027 security recorded GH¢34.97 million from 17 trades.
Petrosol Platinum Energy securities accounted for only a small fraction of corporate turnover, with two transactions totalling less than GH¢200,000.
That concentration illustrates the central challenge facing Ghana’s corporate debt market. Even when headline corporate turnover appears relatively strong, activity can remain heavily dependent on a small number of quasi-sovereign or large institutional issuers.
No trading was recorded in either newly issued government notes and bonds or old government notes and bonds during the session, leaving activity concentrated in restructured debt, Treasury bills and securities-financing transactions.
The September 4 session therefore reinforces a pattern that has characterised the GFIM in recent months: liquidity has returned strongly to Ghana’s fixed-income market, but it remains overwhelmingly concentrated in government-linked instruments.
The prominence of the 2032 DDEP bond is particularly notable because stronger secondary-market activity in restructured securities can help rebuild price discovery and liquidity following Ghana’s domestic debt exchange.
But the broader capital-market challenge remains. A fixed-income market in which 94.00% of turnover is tied directly or indirectly to government securities remains highly sovereign-centric, limiting the extent to which the market channels long-term capital directly into productive private enterprise.
For now, however, the headline signal is clear: GH¢1.64 billion changed hands on the GFIM on September 4, with DDEP bonds leading the market and a single 2032 security accounting for more than one-quarter of the entire day’s turnover.
