- Treasury Bills and DDEP Bonds Account for Nearly 89% Of GFIM Activity
Trading on the Ghana Fixed Income Market reached GH¢1.28bn on Friday, September 25, as investors concentrated activity in Treasury bills and restructured government bonds.
The market recorded 314 transactions across government securities, corporate bonds and sell-buyback trades, according to the GFIM daily trading report.
Treasury bills generated GH¢606.65m in turnover from 230 transactions, making the segment the largest contributor to both trading value and deal count.
The segment accounted for 47.5 per cent of total market turnover and more than 73 per cent of all transactions recorded during the session.
Domestic Debt Exchange Programme bonds followed with GH¢529.11m traded across 43 transactions. The restructured securities represented 41.4 per cent of total turnover.
Together, Treasury bills and DDEP bonds generated GH¢1.14bn, equivalent to almost 89 per cent of the entire market.
The concentration underlines the continuing preference for government instruments in Ghana’s fixed-income market. It also reveals a distinction within that demand: investors are seeking both the liquidity offered by short-term bills and the relatively higher yields available on selected longer-dated DDEP securities.
Sell-buyback transactions involving government bonds added GH¢136.23m through 28 trades, representing 10.7 per cent of turnover.
Activity outside these three segments was limited. New government bonds recorded GH¢2.85m, corporate bonds generated GH¢2.52m and old government securities contributed just GH¢10,104.
The largest transaction concentration was in a Treasury bill maturing on June 21, 2027.
The security, identified as GOG-BL-21/06/27-A7064-2012-0, recorded GH¢303.23mn in turnover through only five transactions.
It alone accounted for almost half of all Treasury-bill turnover and 23.7 per cent of total GFIM activity.
The bill closed at a price of 93.9185, corresponding to a yield of approximately 8.76 per cent.
The large volume executed through only five transactions suggests that institutional investors, rather than retail participants, drove activity in the security.
A second Treasury bill, maturing on July 5, 2027, recorded GH¢102.42m across 25 trades. It closed at 93.5001 with a yield of approximately 8.94 per cent.
Another GH¢55.76m was traded in the August 2, 2027 bill through 17 transactions. The instrument closed at 92.6612 with a yield of about 9.27 per cent.
These securities show a gradual rise in yield as maturity extends further into 2027, although the relationship is not perfectly uniform across the entire Treasury-bill curve.
The dominance of bills is consistent with a market still placing considerable value on liquidity and short-duration exposure.
Short-term government securities allow investors to preserve capital, manage cash requirements and limit the risk that changing interest rates will reduce the market value of their holdings.
They are also easier to price than longer-dated bonds, particularly when uncertainty remains over inflation, future monetary-policy decisions and government financing conditions.
Trading in DDEP securities was led by the bond maturing on February 10, 2032.
The 9.10 per cent coupon bond recorded GH¢147.21m across seven trades. It closed at a yield of 14.36 per cent and a price of 80.6914.
The security represented 27.8 per cent of DDEP turnover and 11.5 per cent of total market activity.
The low closing price reflects the relationship between the bond’s coupon and the yield demanded by investors. Because the market yield of 14.36 per cent is substantially above the 9.10 per cent coupon, the security traded well below its face value.
The February 2029 DDEP bond recorded GH¢110.03m in seven transactions. It closed at a yield of 13.49 per cent and a price of 90.3375.
The February 2031 security contributed GH¢108.17m across eight trades, closing at a yield of 14.36 per cent and a price of 82.7887.
A further GH¢98.23mn was traded in the February 2030 bond through 10 transactions. It ended the session at a yield of 13.81 per cent and a price of 86.7505.
These four securities generated GH¢463.65m, or about 87.6 per cent of all DDEP bond turnover during the session.
The concentration suggests investors are selectively trading the more liquid securities along the restructured yield curve rather than distributing activity evenly across all available maturities.
That selectivity matters for price discovery. A broad secondary market should ideally produce reliable pricing across several points of the yield curve. When turnover is concentrated in a few securities, prices elsewhere may be based on limited or stale transactions.
Sell-buyback transactions amounted to GH¢136.23m, led by the February 2036 DDEP bond.
The 9.70 per cent coupon security accounted for GH¢85.45m through two transactions. It traded at a yield of 14.57 per cent and a weighted average closing price of 75.2239.
The February 2037 bond recorded GH¢16.99m across four trades, while the February 2038 security generated GH¢12.66m through seven transactions.
Sell-buyback trades are often used by financial institutions to obtain short-term liquidity while temporarily transferring securities to another party.
The relatively large value recorded in the 2036 bond indicates that longer-dated DDEP instruments are serving not only as investment assets but also as collateral in liquidity transactions.
Corporate bond trading remained a small part of the market, with turnover of GH¢2.52m from six transactions.
The larger of the two traded corporate securities was a Consolidated Bank Ghana bond maturing in August 2027. It recorded GH¢1.99m across three trades and closed at a price of 102.0519.
A second CBG bond, maturing in August 2028, generated GH¢533,400 through three transactions and closed at 103.3763.
Corporate bonds accounted for less than 0.2 per cent of total GFIM turnover.
The limited activity illustrates the continuing imbalance in Ghana’s fixed-income market, where government securities dominate available instruments and investor demand.
A deeper corporate bond market could provide companies with an alternative to bank financing and offer investors a broader range of risk and return opportunities.
Its development, however, requires a reliable pipeline of issuers, transparent credit information, credible ratings and sufficient secondary-market liquidity.
The GH¢1.28bn turnover presents the appearance of a highly active fixed-income market, but the distribution of trading provides a more qualified picture.
One Treasury bill accounted for almost a quarter of total turnover, while a small group of DDEP bonds drove most activity in the restructured segment.
Excluding Treasury bills, DDEP bonds and sell-buyback trades, outright activity in new government bonds, old government bonds and corporate debt was only about GH¢5.38m.
The market is therefore liquid in particular instruments rather than uniformly liquid across the fixed-income universe.
For investors, this means the ability to buy or sell a security at a reliable price may depend heavily on its maturity, benchmark status and use as collateral.
For policymakers, the figures show progress in secondary-market activity after the domestic debt restructuring, but they also expose the next challenge: extending liquidity beyond a narrow set of government securities.
Friday’s session was strong in value and transaction count. Yet its deeper message is that Ghana’s fixed-income market remains anchored to the state, with private-sector debt occupying only a marginal position.
