Investors Concentrate on DDEP Securities as Ghana Fixed-Income Trading Nears GH¢1bn
Trading on the Ghana Fixed Income Market reached GH¢996.61mn on Thursday, September 10, 2026, with activity overwhelmingly concentrated in Domestic Debt Exchange Programme securities and Treasury bills.
DDEP bonds accounted for GH¢767.32mn, equivalent to approximately 76.99% of total market volume, while Treasury bills contributed another GH¢187.18mn, or 18.78%.
The session recorded 506 trades across the market, underscoring the continued dominance of government-related instruments in secondary-market activity.
The scale of DDEP trading was driven heavily by a relatively small number of securities. The 2023-GC-3 bond maturing February 13, 2029, with an 8.65% coupon, recorded GH¢360.00mn in volume across six trades, making it the single most actively traded security in the session.
That instrument alone represented about 46.92% of total DDEP turnover and 36.12% of the entire GFIM market for the day.
The 2023-GC-6 bond, due February 10, 2032, was another major contributor, recording GH¢189.73mn across 14 trades at a closing yield of 14.23%. The 2023-GC-1 bond attracted GH¢98.43mn at a closing yield of 10.26%, while the 2023-GC-2 recorded GH¢40.00mn at 12.00%.
Other active restructured bonds included the GC-4, GC-5, GC-11 and GC-12 instruments, helping lift aggregate DDEP turnover to more than three-quarters of the market.
Yield movements across the DDEP curve were mixed, suggesting that investor demand remained differentiated by maturity and security rather than moving uniformly.
The GC-1 yield fell from 11.05% to 10.26%, while GC-2 declined from 12.62% to 12.00% and GC-4 eased from 13.51% to 13.25%.
By contrast, GC-5 edged up from 13.87% to 13.95%, while GC-12 fell more sharply from 15.32% to 14.70%, indicating stronger pricing on some longer-dated securities.
Treasury bills remained the second-largest segment, generating GH¢187.18mn across 424 trades. The most heavily traded bill was the security maturing January 18, 2027, which recorded GH¢38.14mn in turnover across 17 transactions and closed at a yield of approximately 5.62%.
That instrument represented about 20.38% of all Treasury-bill trading during the session.
Activity was also spread across a wide range of short-dated maturities. The bill maturing December 7, 2026 recorded GH¢13.31mn, while those maturing November 23, 2026 and November 16, 2026 attracted GH¢7.82mn and GH¢4.11mn respectively.
Further along the curve, bills maturing in the second half of 2027 also drew notable volumes, including GH¢30.59mn in the August 2, 2027 maturity and GH¢20.96mn in the August 30, 2027 instrument.
The Treasury-bill yield curve remained relatively low at the shorter end before rising progressively across longer maturities. Bills with only a few days remaining to maturity closed around 9.82%, while several maturities between October and December 2026 carried yields in the range of roughly 4.93% to 7.12%.
Further into 2027, closing yields gradually moved higher, with the September 6, 2027 maturity closing at approximately 10.07%.
Trading in newly issued Government of Ghana notes and bonds was comparatively modest. The segment recorded GH¢3.06mn in volume across nine trades, all concentrated in the four-year government bond maturing September 2, 2030 with a 12.00% coupon. The security’s closing yield rose slightly from 11.82% to 11.91%, with an end-of-day closing price of approximately 100.28.
There was no recorded turnover in the old Government of Ghana notes and bonds segment during the session. This contrasts sharply with the liquidity seen in the DDEP securities and reinforces the shift in secondary-market activity towards the restructured and newer instruments. It also means the day’s government-bond activity was almost entirely concentrated in the post-restructuring securities architecture.
Corporate bonds generated GH¢26.07m across 19 trades, representing about 2.62% of total GFIM volume.
Ghana Cocoa Board securities dominated that segment, with the August 30, 2027 bond recording GH¢15.47mn and the August 28, 2028 bond attracting GH¢10.21mn. Together, the two COCOBOD instruments accounted for approximately 98.54% of all corporate-bond turnover for the day.
Outside COCOBOD, trading was limited. Petrosol Platinum Energy’s August 2030 bond recorded GH¢366,314 in a single trade, while its August 2031 instrument attracted GH¢14,637.
The concentration of corporate activity in just a handful of securities highlights the continuing liquidity gap between sovereign-linked debt and the wider corporate fixed-income market.
Sell-and-buy-back transactions in Government of Ghana securities contributed a further GH¢12.98m across 18 trades, equivalent to approximately 1.30% of total market activity.
The largest transaction in that segment involved the 2023-GC-3 DDEP security, with GH¢5.63mn traded at a yield of 11.50%. The GC-1 and GC-4 securities also recorded GH¢3.19mn and GH¢1.80mn respectively.
The September 10 session therefore reflected a market whose liquidity remains heavily concentrated in government-related instruments, particularly the securities created under the domestic debt restructuring programme.
DDEP bonds and Treasury bills together accounted for approximately 95.77% of total market turnover, leaving corporate debt and new government securities with relatively small shares.
That concentration provides liquidity for selected sovereign instruments, but it also illustrates the depth challenge facing Ghana’s broader fixed-income market.
For investors, the session showed continuing differentiation across maturities and instruments rather than a uniform directional move in yields. Strong turnover in selected DDEP securities suggests that these instruments remain central to portfolio repositioning and liquidity management, while the breadth of Treasury-bill trades points to sustained interest in shorter-duration assets.
The more important structural question is whether liquidity can gradually broaden beyond a small group of government and quasi-sovereign securities into a deeper corporate debt market capable of financing private-sector investment at scale.
