- Treasury Bills Swallow 71.54% Of GFIM Turnover as Tuesday Trading Hits GH¢2.55bn
Trading on the Ghana Fixed Income Market reached GH¢2.55bn on Tuesday, September 22, with Treasury bills accounting for more than seven out of every GH¢10 traded as investors concentrated activity in short-dated government securities.
The official GFIM trading report showed Treasury bill turnover of GH¢1.83bn, equivalent to 71.54% of total market volume for the session. Across all market segments, 332 transactions were recorded, highlighting the overwhelming influence of Treasury bills on the day’s liquidity.
DDEP bonds were the second-largest component of activity, generating GH¢465.24m across eight trades and accounting for 18.21% of total turnover. Sell-and-buy-back transactions in government notes and bonds added another GH¢246.70m, representing 9.66% of the market.
Corporate bonds contributed GH¢14.92m, while trading in newly issued government notes and bonds was only GH¢166,805 and no turnover was recorded in old government securities.
The dominance of Treasury bills was not spread evenly across maturities. The single largest Treasury bill position traded was the security maturing on August 23, 2027, which recorded volume of GH¢405.36m in only two transactions and closed at a yield of 9.55%.
That instrument alone represented roughly 22.18% of all Treasury bill turnover during the session, demonstrating how a small number of large institutional transactions can materially shape headline market volumes.
Another sizeable transaction occurred in the bill maturing on May 31, 2027, where GH¢390.58mn changed hands across five trades.
The April 12, 2027 maturity attracted GH¢326.39m in a single transaction, while the August 2, 2027 bill recorded GH¢268.03mn across 25 trades.
Those four maturities together accounted for more than GH¢1.39bn, or about three-quarters of the day’s Treasury bill activity.
The trading pattern points to a market where investors remain willing to deploy substantial liquidity into government securities but are differentiating aggressively across the maturity curve.
Closing Treasury bill yields ranged from about 4.87% on the December 21, 2026 maturity to 9.88% on the September 20, 2027 bill. The progressively higher yields across longer maturities indicate the additional return demanded for extending duration, even within the short-term government debt market.
Activity in DDEP securities was similarly concentrated. The 2023-GC-5 bond, maturing on February 11, 2031, dominated the segment with turnover of GH¢319.27mn across four trades and closed at a yield of 14.24%.
It accounted for approximately 68.63% of all outright DDEP bond turnover for the session, making it the most important bond in the secondary government securities market on Monday.
The 2032 DDEP security followed with GH¢70.00mn in turnover and a closing yield of 14.12%, while the 2038 maturity recorded GH¢60.00mn across two transactions at a closing yield of 14.88%.
The shorter 2027 GC-1 instrument attracted GH¢15.97mn and closed at 10.35%. The yield dispersion illustrates the premium investors continue to demand as duration lengthens across Ghana’s restructured domestic debt curve.
Sell-and-buy-back trades added another layer of liquidity to the market, led by the DDEP bond maturing in February 2037. That instrument generated GH¢180.00m across three transactions at a yield of 14.43%, equivalent to almost three-quarters of total sell-and-buy-back activity.
The 2030 DDEP bond attracted GH¢34.90mn, while the 2038 instrument generated a further GH¢31.10mn.
Trading in new government bonds remained extremely thin by comparison. The four-year government bond maturing in September 2030 generated GH¢156,805 across two transactions and closed at a yield of 11.50%, down from an opening yield of 11.85%. The seven-year security maturing in March 2033 attracted only GH¢10,000 in a single trade and closed unchanged at 12.51%.
The corporate bond market also remained a relatively small part of GFIM activity, producing just GH¢14.92m across 19 transactions. Petrosol Platinum Energy’s bond maturing in August 2031 was the largest corporate instrument traded, generating GH¢6.24mn across three transactions.
Ghana Cocoa Board securities accounted for most of the remaining turnover, with its August 2027 and August 2028 bonds recording GH¢4.44m and GH¢4.24m respectively.
The concentration of activity in government paper underscores the continuing imbalance between sovereign and corporate fixed-income markets in Ghana.
Corporate securities accounted for only 0.58% of total Monday turnover, compared with more than 99.00% for Treasury bills, government bonds and associated repo-style transactions combined.
That difference illustrates the scale of the challenge facing Ghana’s capital market as it seeks to develop deeper private-sector debt financing alongside the government securities market.
Monday’s trading therefore presented two distinct pictures of the fixed-income market. On one side, liquidity was substantial, with more than GH¢2.55bn changing hands and several individual securities attracting transactions running into hundreds of millions of cedis.
On the other, that liquidity remained heavily concentrated in Treasury bills and a handful of DDEP bonds rather than being distributed broadly across instruments.
For investors, the session reinforced the appeal of liquidity and shorter-duration government exposure while still showing demand for selected longer-dated restructured bonds at yields above 14.00%.
With policymakers and market operators, the numbers underline a longer-term question: whether strong trading in sovereign securities can eventually provide the depth and pricing benchmarks necessary to support a more active corporate debt market.
The September 22 session was decisively a Treasury bill market, with GH¢1.83bn of short-term government paper setting the tone for the entire GFIM.
