- Ghana Fixed-Income Market Opens September with GH¢1.58bn In Trades
Trading on the Ghana Fixed Income Market opened September with total turnover of GH¢1.58 billion, as investors concentrated heavily on Treasury bills while activity in restructured government bonds and sell/buy-back transactions provided additional liquidity.
The September 1, 2026 trading report shows that GH¢1.04 billion of Treasury bills changed hands across 308 transactions, accounting for 65.81% of the market’s total turnover. Overall activity reached GH¢1,581,638,584 from 368 trades, highlighting the continuing dominance of government securities in Ghana’s secondary fixed-income market.
Sell/buy-back transactions involving Government of Ghana notes and bonds were the second-largest component, contributing GH¢349.80 million from 33 trades, or about 22.12% of total activity. Domestic Debt Exchange Programme bonds recorded GH¢186.25 million in turnover from 15 transactions, representing another 11.78% of the session.
The remaining segments were comparatively small. Old Government of Ghana notes and bonds generated GH¢1.90 million, corporate bonds recorded GH¢1.81 million, while new government notes and bonds contributed just under GH¢1.00 million.
Excluding sell/buy-back activity, outright fixed-income turnover stood at approximately GH¢1.23 billion, reinforcing the scale of investor activity in government securities at the start of the new month.
Treasury bills remained the clear centre of liquidity. The single most actively traded Treasury instrument was the bill maturing on September 14, 2026, which recorded GH¢250.45 million across 13 transactions and closed at a yield of approximately 8.65%.
Other short-dated maturities also attracted significant volumes. The 91-day bill maturing on November 16, 2026 recorded about GH¢159.41 million, while the September 21 maturity generated approximately GH¢65.04 million.
Activity extended further along the Treasury bill curve, however, showing that investors were not confined entirely to instruments approaching maturity. The 182-day bill maturing on March 1, 2027 recorded about GH¢127.93 million, while several 364-day instruments also generated meaningful secondary-market turnover.
Among the one-year securities, the Treasury bill maturing on February 1, 2027 recorded approximately GH¢96.61 million, while the January 18, 2027 maturity generated about GH¢78.86 million. The August 30, 2027 instrument attracted a further GH¢67.54 million, pointing to continued appetite for maturities extending deeper into 2027.
The concentration of activity in Treasury bills reflects a market where investors continue to value liquidity and relatively short duration even as Ghana works to rebuild a more conventional domestic yield curve after its debt restructuring.
Shorter-dated government instruments offer investors greater flexibility in an environment where inflation, monetary policy and fiscal financing conditions can still change materially. For government, however, heavy dependence on short-term debt carries refinancing risks because large volumes must be rolled over frequently.
The DDEP bond market remained the second-largest outright trading segment. Its strongest instrument was the 9.10% bond maturing February 10, 2032, which recorded GH¢121.35 million across seven trades.
The security’s yield edged higher from an opening 14.65% to 14.67%, while its end-of-day closing price stood at approximately GH¢79.55 per GH¢100.00 of face value. The size of the transaction made the bond the largest DDEP security traded during the session.
The February 11, 2031 DDEP bond generated another GH¢40.35 million, with its yield rising from 13.90% to 14.44%. Meanwhile, the February 12, 2030 bond recorded GH¢23.60 million, with the closing yield easing to 14.00% from 14.20%.
Those movements show that pricing remained differentiated across the restructured curve. Investors were willing to transact meaningfully in selected maturities, but yields continued to reflect differences in duration and perceived risk rather than moving uniformly across all DDEP instruments.
New Government of Ghana bond activity was much thinner. The 12.50% seven-year bond maturing March 29, 2033 recorded GH¢992,668 in a single transaction, with its closing yield edging to 12.73% from 12.72%.
Trading in old Government of Ghana securities totalled GH¢1.90 million. The largest of those transactions involved the 18.10% bond maturing June 12, 2028, which recorded GH¢1.50 million and saw its yield decline from 21.43% to 20.48%.
Corporate bond activity remained subdued at GH¢1.81 million across six transactions. The largest traded corporate security was a Ghana Cocoa Board bond maturing in August 2027, underscoring the relatively limited depth of the private fixed-income market compared with sovereign securities.
The imbalance remains one of the structural challenges facing Ghana’s capital market. Government securities provide the overwhelming majority of liquidity, while corporate issuers continue to account for only a small fraction of secondary-market activity.
Sell/buy-back transactions added substantial volume to Tuesday’s session. The largest transaction in that segment involved the same February 2032 DDEP bond that dominated outright DDEP trading, with GH¢142.79 million changing hands at a yield of 13.30%.
A DDEP bond maturing in August 2028 recorded another GH¢74.00 million, while the February 2027 DDEP instrument generated approximately GH¢67.29 million in sell/buy-back activity. The scale of these transactions shows the importance of government securities not only as investment assets but also as instruments supporting short-term liquidity management in the financial system.
The September 1 session therefore presents a familiar picture of Ghana’s fixed-income market: substantial liquidity, but liquidity concentrated heavily in government debt.
Treasury bills continue to absorb most secondary-market interest, DDEP securities are gradually developing deeper trading in selected maturities, while new government bonds and corporate securities remain considerably less active.
For policymakers, the longer-term challenge is to move beyond a market dominated by short-term sovereign instruments. A deeper fixed-income system would require stronger demand for longer-term government bonds as well as a significantly more liquid corporate debt market capable of channeling capital directly to private businesses.
For now, the GH¢1.58 billion recorded on the first trading day of September shows that investors remain active. But where that money is going is equally important: almost two-thirds of the entire session remained concentrated in Treasury bills, confirming that short-term government debt continues to sit at the centre of Ghana’s fixed-income market.
