- Ghana Fixed-Income Turnover Reaches GH¢909.15m As Government Securities Command 94.61% Of Market
Trading on the Ghana Fixed Income Market reached GH¢909.15 million on Thursday, September 3, 2026, with activity concentrated heavily in government securities as sell/buy-back transactions and Domestic Debt Exchange Programme bonds accounted for more than two-thirds of the session.
The market recorded 976 transactions, according to the GFIM trading report, with sell/buy-back trades in Government of Ghana notes and bonds emerging as the largest segment at GH¢342.26 million. That represented 37.65% of total turnover and underlined the continuing importance of collateralised liquidity activity in the secondary market.
DDEP bonds followed closely with GH¢310.20 million across 23 transactions, accounting for 34.12% of overall trading. Treasury bills generated another GH¢203.98 million, equivalent to 22.44% of the market, while corporate bonds contributed GH¢49.00 million, or 5.39%.
New Government of Ghana notes and bonds recorded relatively modest turnover of GH¢3.71 million, representing just 0.41% of the session. No activity was recorded in old government notes and bonds.
Taken together, government-linked instruments excluding corporate securities accounted for approximately 94.61% of total GFIM turnover, reinforcing the extent to which Ghana’s fixed-income secondary market remains dominated by sovereign securities.
The composition of activity is important because headline turnover alone can overstate the depth of outright investment trading when a large share originates from sell/buy-back transactions. Excluding the GH¢342.26 million in such trades, outright market activity amounted to about GH¢566.88 million, or 62.35% of the day’s total.
Within the DDEP segment, trading was particularly concentrated in the Government of Ghana bond maturing on February 10, 2032, carrying a 9.10% coupon. The security recorded GH¢204.85 million in volume across five transactions, accounting for approximately 66.04% of all DDEP bond turnover.
The 2032 DDEP bond closed at a yield of 14.56% and a weighted average closing price of about 79.90. Its dominance indicates that investor activity remained concentrated in selected maturities rather than being distributed evenly across the restructured bond curve.
The concentration matters for market interpretation. Strong turnover in one bond can produce a large headline DDEP figure without necessarily signalling equally deep liquidity across the full range of post-restructuring instruments.
Treasury bills produced the highest number of transactions during the session, with 864 trades generating GH¢203.98 million in volume. That means the short-term government securities segment accounted for roughly 88.52% of all transactions even though it represented only 22.44% of total traded value.
The most actively traded Treasury bill by volume was the instrument maturing on July 26, 2027, which recorded GH¢32.09 million across four transactions. Its closing yield stood at approximately 10.18%, with a closing price of about 91.65.
The contrast between transaction count and value provides useful insight into the structure of the market. Treasury bills generated frequent trading across many tickets, while the bond market was characterised by larger transactions concentrated in a relatively small number of securities.
Corporate bond activity reached GH¢49.00 million across 14 trades, providing one of the more significant non-sovereign contributions to the session. But even within that segment, liquidity was highly concentrated.
A Ghana Cocoa Board bond maturing on August 30, 2027, carrying a 13.00% coupon, recorded GH¢43.77 million across seven transactions. That represented approximately 89.32% of total corporate bond turnover for the day.
A second COCOBOD security maturing in August 2028 accounted for the remaining GH¢5.23 million, meaning corporate bond activity was effectively confined to the two cocoa-sector instruments during the session.
The concentration underscores one of the longstanding challenges facing Ghana’s fixed-income market: building deeper secondary-market liquidity outside government and quasi-government securities. Corporate debt can provide businesses with an alternative source of long-term financing, but its usefulness depends partly on whether investors can trade those securities after issuance.
Sell/buy-back activity was spread more broadly across the DDEP curve, although selected maturities remained dominant. The largest single transaction cluster involved the February 10, 2032 DDEP bond, which generated GH¢73.37 million across three trades and accounted for 21.44% of all sell/buy-back turnover.
The February 2028 DDEP bond recorded GH¢71.46 million, while the February 2033 instrument generated GH¢50.00 million and the February 2027 bond contributed GH¢45.25 million. Those trades illustrate how the restructured government securities continue to function not only as investment assets but also as instruments in market liquidity management.
New Government of Ghana bonds made only a small contribution to the session. The seven-year bond maturing on March 29, 2033, carrying a 12.50% coupon, recorded the entire GH¢3.71 million turnover in that segment in a single transaction.
The bond closed at a yield of 12.50% and a price close to par at approximately 99.97. Its relatively limited volume contrasted sharply with activity in DDEP securities and short-term Treasury bills.
For investors, the September 3 session therefore presented a market with substantial headline turnover but clear concentration risks. Sell/buy-back trades and DDEP bonds alone accounted for 71.77% of total activity, while individual securities dominated both the DDEP and corporate segments.
That does not diminish the significance of the GH¢909.15 million traded. Rather, it highlights why market depth should be assessed not only by aggregate turnover but also by the number of active instruments, transaction frequency and the distribution of liquidity across maturities and issuers.
Treasury bills continue to provide the broadest transaction activity, while government bonds remain responsible for much of the market’s value. Corporate debt, although present, remains comparatively small and concentrated.
The broader challenge for GFIM is therefore to convert strong episodic turnover into consistently distributed liquidity across the yield curve and across a wider range of issuers.
On September 3, the market remained overwhelmingly a government-securities market. Of every GH¢100 traded on GFIM, about GH¢94.61 was linked to government instruments, illustrating both the depth of sovereign activity and the distance Ghana’s corporate bond market still has to travel.
