- February 22, 2022
- Posted by: Charles Yeboah Nixon
- Categories: Economics, Finance
Almost half of the country’s external debt as of November 2021 were in commercial loans, largely from Eurobonds, the Bank of Ghana has revealed in its Monetary Policy Report.
The commercial debt of $16.01 billion, represented 42% of total external loans of $27.89 billion, an increase of $3.38 billion over the previous year.
It was followed by multilateral and bilateral loans of $8.08 billion and $3.79 billion respectively.
Interestingly, both the multilateral and bilateral loans have been declining over the last couple of years. This might be due to Ghana’s position of being a lower middle income country.
Meanwhile, the external debt of the country increased by GH¢23.4 billion from GH¢141.8 billion at the end of December 2020 to GH¢165.1 billion as of November 2021.
External debt also constituted 47.9% of the nation’s total public debt at the end of November 2021.
Domestic debt inches up by ¢28.09bn in November 2021
The domestic debt went up by GH¢28.09 billion in the 11 months of 2021 to GH¢179.40 billion in November 2021.
The banking system held GH¢89.64 billion of the domestic debt in November 2021, GH¢12.72 billion more than the December 2020 figure.
The non-banking system constituted GH¢60.05 billion of the domestic debt in November 2021, GH¢12.72 billion more than December 2021.
Foreign investors however held GH¢29.69 billion of the domestic debt in November 2021. It was however a decline of GH¢27.71 billion recorded in December 2021.
The statistics from the Bank of Ghana indicates that government borrowed significantly on the domestic market in 2021.
Ghana’s public debt however stood at GH¢344.6 billion in November 2021.
