Ghana's total debt stock stood at $7.1 billion as at December 2007, said Central Bank Governor Paul Acquah. This is made up of $3.5 billion domestic debt and $3.6 billion external debt stock, said Governor Acquah at the first Monetary Policy Committee news conference in Accra, which also announced the maintenance of the Prime Rate at 13.5 percent.

This according to Governor Acquah brings the total public debt to 48.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product, down from the 50.9 percent of GDP recorded in 2006.

The increase in the debt stock reflected both in the short-term and medium term securities, which increased by GH?86.9 million and GH?727.7 million respectively.

The Figure Dr Acquah said showed a continued shift in investor preference for long-dated instruments and reflects the impact of government debt management strategy of restructuring government debt from the short-term into medium term securities.

Giving an overview of the general economic performance for the last quarter of 2007, the Central Bank boss said available information on the real sector indicators show that the economic base is expanding rapidly with income and corporate tax collections growing by 22.4 percent compared with the level in 2006.

He said workers contribution to Social Security recorded a growth of 45 over percent, with retail sales index increasing by 37.0 percent through the first eleven months of the year.

Dr Acquah said average number of job offers increased from 717 jobs per month in 2006 to 757 jobs per month in 2007, totaling 8,558 against total recorded lay-offs of 2,783 for the year. This compared with 8,607 job offers and 5059 lay-offs recorded in 2006.

The robust economic activity during the year was accompanied by a strong growth in bank credit. Credit to the private sector increased by 14.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 to GH?3,298.2 million in December, following a growth of 13.5 percent in the third quarter, compared with 12.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006.

For the year to December 2007, banks" credit to the private sector grew by 59.8 percent (GH?1,234.2 million) to GH?3,298.2 million compared with 42.8 percent (GH?618.6 million) recorded for the same period in 2006. The rapid expansion in the credit portfolio of banks was funded mainly from increases in deposits. Time and savings deposits rose by 48.1 percent to GH?1,826.6 million during the year.

The distribution of the increase in credit for the year was broad-based. The services sector accounted for 27.5 percent, followed by Commerce (22.3 percent), Miscellaneous (18.1 percent), Construction (9.5 percent) and manufacturing (6.2 percent).

In general, the fourth quarter of 2007 shows strong asset growth in the banking sector and significant improvement in all the financial soundness indicators relative to December 2006. Total assets of the banking system grew by 50.4 percent to GH?7,795.6 million (56.7 percent of GDP) at the end of December, compared with 41.1 percent recorded for he same period in 2006.

The quality of banks? loan book continued to improve during the year. The Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) ratio declined from 7.9 percent in December 2006 to 6.9 percent in December 2007. Banks? loan loss provision to gross loans ratio declined from 7.4 percent to 5.9 in December. However, the NPL net of provisions to capital ratio inched up from 4.2 percent in September to 4.8 percent in December 2007, on the back of slower growth in banks? networth.