The June 2022 debt figure brings Ghana’s debt to gross domestic product, GDP ratio to 78.3%, using an estimated GDP for 2022 of about 502 billion Ghana cedis.
In dollars, Ghana’s total public debt stock dropped from $58.6 billion in December 2021 to $54.4 billion at half year, 2022.
Also, a look at the data from the Central Bank shows that year on year, from June 2021 to June 2022, the debt stock rose by about 17.5% from 334.8 billion Ghana cedis to 393.4 billion Ghana cedis.
On a year-on-year basis, that is from June 2021 to June 2022, that represents an increase of GH¢58.6 billion.
A further breakdown of the debt numbers shows that the component of debt secured locally rose by about 8 billion Ghana cedis from 181.8 billion Ghana cedis in December 2021 to 190.1 billion Ghana cedis in June 2022, which represents about 38% of the projected GDP for 2022.
The external component of the debt increased significantly, however, by about 33 billion Ghana cedis in the first six months of 2022, from 170.0 billion Ghana cedis in December 2021 to 203.4 billion Ghana cedis in June 2022.
The overall increase in the debt numbers in cedi terms, according to data from the Bank of Ghana, came largely from the over 16% depreciation of the cedi against the dollar from December to June 2022.
According to the Central Bank, the US Dollar, on the interbank foreign exchange market, was selling at around 6 cedis in December 2021 and at about 7 cedis 43 pesewas in June 2022.
