Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has said government plans to reduce its debt to Gross Domestic Product ratio from its current 100 percent to 50 percent by 2028.
According to him, one of the reasons for Ghana's increasing debt levels is due to interest payments which were absorbing between 70 percent and 100 percent of government revenues.
Touching on the debt exchange programme on December 5, 2022, Ken Ofori-Atta said: “The Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA) demonstrated unequivocally that Ghana’s public debt is unsustainable, and that the Government may not be able to fully service its debt down the road if no action is taken.”
“Indeed, debt servicing is now absorbing more than half of total government revenues and almost 70% of tax revenues, while our total public debt stock, including that of State-Owned Enterprises and all, exceeds 100% of our GDP. This is why we are today announcing the debt exchange which will help in restoring our capacity to service debt,” he added.
Meanwhile, under the domestic debt exchange programme, bondholders are allowed to voluntarily exchange their bonds with fresh bonds.