- Ghana Fixed-Income Turnover Slips 5.11% To GH¢6.35bn As Treasury Bills Seize Half of Market
Trading on the Ghana Fixed Income Market eased in the week to September 18, with total turnover falling to GH¢6.35bn as a sharp increase in Treasury bill activity failed to fully offset weaker trading in government bonds and corporate securities.
The week’s turnover was down 5.11% from GH¢6.69bn in the previous period, reflecting a market increasingly concentrated in short-dated instruments and selected post-restructuring government securities.
Treasury bills alone accounted for just over half of all activity, reinforcing their position as the dominant source of secondary-market liquidity.
Treasury bill turnover climbed to GH¢3.20bn from GH¢2.28bn a week earlier, representing an increase of approximately 40.78%. The segment accounted for 50.43% of total fixed-income turnover during the week, making it by far the largest contributor to market activity.
The shift suggests investors continued to favour shorter-duration instruments even as trading in several longer-dated government bonds weakened.
Activity in Domestic Debt Exchange Programme securities moved in the opposite direction. DDEP bond turnover declined to GH¢1.97bn from GH¢3.81bn in the previous week, a fall of 48.32%, although the segment still represented almost 31.00% of overall GFIM turnover.
The drop was significant because DDEP instruments had been the largest component of activity in the previous week, indicating a substantial week-on-week redistribution of liquidity towards Treasury bills.
Trading in new government bonds was particularly thin, falling to just GH¢4.76mn from GH¢324.71mn, a contraction of approximately 98.54%.
Old government bonds generated only GH¢894,871 in turnover, down 38.69% from GH¢1.46mn, leaving both categories marginal relative to the wider market.
Together, the figures underline how heavily secondary-market trading has become concentrated in Treasury bills and DDEP securities rather than the broader range of government debt instruments.
Corporate securities also recorded a quieter week, with turnover declining to GH¢64.83mn from GH¢151.59mn. That represented a 57.23% fall and left corporate instruments accounting for only 1.02% of total GFIM activity.
The weakness suggests that the corporate bond market remains a relatively small component of fixed-income liquidity compared with sovereign instruments, limiting the depth available to companies seeking more active secondary-market pricing.
One of the strongest movements came from secondary bond market block trades, where turnover rose to GH¢1.11bn from GH¢132.01mn.
That represented an increase of about 740.66%, lifting the segment’s contribution to total market turnover to 17.47%.
The scale of the increase helped cushion the fall in ordinary DDEP and new government bond activity and suggests that large negotiated transactions played an unusually important role during the week.
Within the detailed government bond market, the nine-year DDEP bond was overwhelmingly the most actively traded security, recording turnover of approximately GH¢1.16bn.
That represented about 73.69% of the detailed bond volumes listed in the weekly wrap, far ahead of the four-year DDEP bond at GH¢115.81mn and the eight-year DDEP bond at GH¢73.37mn.
The concentration highlights how liquidity continues to cluster around individual maturities rather than being evenly distributed across the government yield curve.
The 10-year DDEP bond recorded GH¢50.00mn in trading, while the 14-year and 11-year securities attracted GH¢42.91mn and GH¢42.27mn respectively. The seven-year DDEP bond generated GH¢32.87mn, followed by the six-year instrument at GH¢30.00mn and the 15-year DDEP security at GH¢22.65mn. Trading in the two new government bonds included in the schedule remained minimal, with the four-year new bond recording GH¢5.27mn and the seven-year new bond just GH¢50,000.
Yield movements were mixed but generally tilted higher across the longer end of the curve. The four-year DDEP yield increased by 14 basis points to 10.40%, while the five-year yield rose 30 basis points to 12.05% and the seven-year DDEP yield jumped 104 basis points to 14.10%. The six-year yield, however, declined by 11 basis points to 12.90%, showing that repricing was not uniform across adjacent maturities.
Further along the curve, the eight-year DDEP yield rose 39 basis points to 14.19%, while the nine-year instrument despite being the week’s most actively traded bond moved 21 basis points higher to 14.32%.
The 10-year yield was broadly stable at 14.22%, increasing by only two basis points, while the 11-year maturity remained unchanged at 14.66%.
These movements point to relatively firmer pricing pressure across portions of the medium-to-long end even as overall bond turnover fell.
Longer maturities also saw yields edge upward. The 12-year DDEP bond increased nine basis points to 14.80%, the 13-year rose 29 basis points to 15.00%, the 14-year increased 30 basis points to 15.15%, and the 15-year maturity climbed 50 basis points to 15.20%.
The gradual rise through the long end produced a more pronounced upward slope in yields, with investors demanding higher returns as maturity risk increased.
The new government bond curve showed a somewhat different pattern. The four-year new bond yield declined by 19 basis points to 11.85%, while the seven-year new bond was virtually unchanged at 12.51%, just one basis point above the previous week.
However, the extremely low trading volumes in those instruments mean the yield moves should be interpreted cautiously because limited liquidity can make price signals less representative of broader market sentiment.
Overall, the September 14–18 GFIM session showed a market that remained liquid in aggregate but increasingly dependent on short-term government securities and a small number of heavily traded bonds.
Treasury bills absorbed more than half of weekly turnover, while the collapse in new government bond trading and weaker DDEP volumes underscored the uneven distribution of secondary-market liquidity.
The rise in long-dated yields alongside that concentration suggests investors are still distinguishing sharply between maturity, liquidity and duration risk rather than treating Ghana’s sovereign curve as a single uniform market.
The broader signal is that the fixed-income market remains active, but its composition is changing materially from week to week. A 5.11% decline in headline turnover masks a much larger rotation underneath: Treasury bill trading rose by nearly GH¢928mn, DDEP activity fell by about GH¢1.84bn and block trades surged by almost GH¢978mn.
For investors and policymakers, that shift may be as important as the headline turnover figure because it shows where liquidity is actually concentrating and where the market is increasingly demanding a higher return to hold longer-dated Ghanaian debt.
