- GH¢1.21bn DDEP Bond Trade Powers Ghana Fixed-Income Market on Monday
Trading on the Ghana Fixed Income Market reached GH¢3.80 billion on Monday, August 24, 2026, with bonds issued under the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme accounting for more than two-thirds of the value traded as activity remained heavily concentrated in government securities.
The market recorded 2,219 transactions across government notes and bonds, Treasury bills and sell/buy-back transactions, according to the GFIM daily trading report.
DDEP bonds generated GH¢2.57 billion, equivalent to 67.73% of total turnover, making them by far the largest segment of the market by traded value.
Treasury bills followed with GH¢978.01 million, representing 25.75% of the day’s turnover, while sell/buy-back transactions involving Government of Ghana securities contributed another GH¢242.17 million, or 6.38%.
Trading in new Government of Ghana notes and bonds was comparatively thin at GH¢4.67 million, while old government securities generated just GH¢600,000.
The concentration of activity in DDEP instruments provides another indication of the central role that the restructured securities now play in Ghana’s secondary debt market following the disruption caused by the 2023 domestic debt exchange.
Within the DDEP segment, the most heavily traded security generated GH¢1.21 billion across 28 transactions. The instrument, GOG-BD-16/02/27-A6143-1838-8.35, closed at a price of approximately 98.48 with a yield of 11.67%.
That single security accounted for approximately 46.84% of all DDEP bond turnover and almost 31.73% of the entire GH¢3.80 billion recorded across the market.
The concentration is significant because it shows that headline turnover can be driven by a relatively small number of large transactions rather than uniformly distributed activity across the fixed-income curve.
Treasury bills, by contrast, dominated in terms of the number of transactions. The segment recorded 2,072 trades, equivalent to approximately 93.38% of all transactions reported for the session, even though it accounted for only about a quarter of the monetary value traded.
The most actively traded Treasury bill by value was GOG-BL-23/08/27-A7109-2021-0, which generated GH¢226.95 million from 25 transactions. It closed at approximately 89.69, with a reported yield of about 11.50%.
That instrument alone represented around 23.21% of total Treasury bill turnover. The divergence between transaction count and traded value is important.
Treasury bills attracted a very high number of individual trades, suggesting broad day-to-day activity in the short-term government securities market. DDEP bonds, however, attracted much larger transaction sizes, giving them a substantially larger share of overall turnover despite recording only 101 trades.
Sell/buy-back transactions generated GH¢242.17 million from 44 trades, providing another source of market activity as investors used government securities in short-term liquidity and financing transactions.
New Government of Ghana notes and bonds recorded only one trade worth GH¢4.67 million. The security involved, GOG-BD-29/03/33-A6155-2001-12.50, traded at a yield of 14.00% and a closing price of approximately 93.62.
Old Government of Ghana notes and bonds similarly recorded a single transaction, worth GH¢600,000.
The absence of corporate bond activity is notable against the broader effort by the Ghana Stock Exchange and regulators to deepen the corporate debt market.
Recent corporate issuances, including new note programmes entering the market, have raised expectations that institutional savings could increasingly be channelled towards private-sector debt as interest rates decline.
Monday’s session nevertheless demonstrates that government securities continue to dominate day-to-day fixed-income activity.
That dominance is not unusual in an emerging debt market. Sovereign securities typically provide the benchmark yield curve, greater issuance volumes and more familiar instruments for institutional investors.
But the longer-term development of Ghana’s capital market will depend on whether liquidity eventually broadens beyond government debt.
The structure of Monday’s trading also offers a useful distinction between turnover and liquidity. A GH¢3.80 billion session is substantial, but high turnover concentrated in a handful of securities does not necessarily mean every instrument can be bought and sold easily at transparent prices.
A deeper market would ideally combine large aggregate turnover with activity distributed across maturities, issuers and different categories of fixed-income securities.
Its GH¢2.57 billion turnover shows that securities created during one of the most disruptive episodes in Ghana’s domestic financial history have become significant instruments in secondary-market trading.
The Treasury bill market, meanwhile, remains the most frequently traded segment, accounting for more than nine out of every 10 transactions recorded on Monday. Together, DDEP bonds and Treasury bills accounted for 93.48% of the GH¢3.80 billion traded during the session.
The figures therefore tell two stories about Ghana’s fixed-income market. The first is one of substantial activity: nearly GH¢3.80 billion worth of securities changed hands in a single session.
The second is one of concentration: the overwhelming majority of that activity remained tied to government paper, while corporate bonds recorded no trades at all.
As Ghana attempts to deepen its capital markets, the next measure of progress will therefore not simply be whether overall GFIM turnover continues to rise. It will be whether the liquidity now visible in sovereign securities begins to spread across a wider range of instruments particularly corporate debt capable of directing more domestic savings towards productive private-sector investment.
