Finance Minister Seth Terkper has defended Ghana’s timing of issuing the West African country’s second Eurobond.

The Ghanaian Government took some flak from some economic watchers for issuing the US$Ibn bond at the wrong time.

Some critics say Ghana suffered a high interest rate of almost 8 percent in issuing the bond as a result of the apparent wrong timing.

However, Mr. Seth Terkper has challenged such assertions.

He told Journalists at a press conference at the Flagstaff House on Monday that unlike other countries, Ghana had to satisfy certain constitutional requirements such as securing parliamentary approval before issuing the bond.

“…At the time we were ready, the US quantitative issuing policy changed but let me say that together with the external advisors, we kept track of what was going on. The US housing market also started recovering. There were some signs of stability in the Chinese market and if we didn’t think that we had things right, we wouldn’t have issued the bond at the time we did”, Mr. Terkper explained.

According to the Minister, “we chose the best time with the advice of our advisors…the fact that both elements of the bond were oversubscribed shows that the timing could not have been better”.

The total packaged of the bond was oversubscribed by over US$2.5bn.