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Ghana has formally closed the chapter on one of the most consequential emergency measures introduced during its debt crisis, with the Ministry of Finance announcing the expiry of a three-year ban on new domestic bond issuance that was put in place after the country defaulted on its debt obligations in 2022.
The Ministry described the development as a major milestone in Ghana’s fiscal recovery, noting that the expiration comes at a time when inflation is low, investor confidence has improved, and the macroeconomic environment is strong, supported by a robust medium-term debt management strategy and significant buffers.
The restriction was introduced in 2023 as part of the conditions surrounding the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP), a sweeping restructuring exercise that reorganised approximately GH¢137 billion in domestic bonds and triggered significant losses across the banking sector. Preventing new bond issuance at the time was intended to stabilise the market and avoid piling fresh obligations onto a system already under severe stress.
Since then, the government has worked to rebuild credibility through a series of cash coupon payments to DDEP bondholders, with the most recent payment of $909 million in February 2026 marking the sixth coupon distribution and the second made entirely in cash with no payment-in-kind component.
With the ban now lifted, the government says it will move to reduce its heavy reliance on short-term Treasury bills for budget financing and instead issue new longer-dated domestic bonds, a shift expected to improve the maturity structure of Ghana’s public debt and reduce the refinancing pressure that has built up in the short end of the market.
Treasury bill rates have already fallen from a peak of 28.9 percent at the height of the debt crisis to around 10.7 percent currently, the lowest in 14 years, reflecting the broader improvement in financial conditions that has preceded the government’s formal return to bond issuance.
The Ministry of Finance had earlier appointed a new set of Primary Dealers (PDs) and Bond Market Specialists (BMS) to lead the issuance process, signalling that the operational groundwork for re-entering the market had been laid well in advance of Monday’s announcement.
The timing of the announcement comes at a delicate moment for Ghana’s external environment. Global markets are under pressure from the escalating Middle East conflict, which has sent oil prices and the US dollar sharply higher while simultaneously boosting gold prices. Sustained elevated gold revenues could help shore up the foreign exchange reserves that support macroeconomic stability, while rising fuel import costs present a competing risk to the inflation gains that have made bond market re-entry possible.
