Investors are more confident in Ghana now than before - Ken Ofori-Atta

Mr Ofori-Atta was speaking in Ghana’s Parliament on the successful completion of the IMF programme among other recent issues.

In his speech, he compared the 3 billion dollar bond to the last bond of 750 million dollars raised under the erstwhile John Mahama administration.

Mr. Ofori-Atta said that the current government got a better coupon rate this time compared to the previous government. According to him, this signifies a positive sign at a time Ghana was exiting an IMF programme.

“The last Eurobond of the previous government of 750 million dollars was issued in 2016, the order book was 4 billion dollars over five times larger. But this came at a high cost of 9.25 percent for six years,” Mr. Ofori-Atta recalled.

Mr. Ofori-Atta noted that with about 20 percent oversubscription, the international investment community was telling the government that it is safe to invest in Ghana.

This is coming after the cedi suffered some depreciation against the dollar. However, it has recovered quickly indicating that the fall was not due to macroeconomic fundamental.

“It is clearer from the data that the depreciation of the cedi was not due to weak economic fundamentals but rather a combination of structural rigidities and apparent speculative behavior of portfolio investors”

He argued that the recovery of the cedi which begun before the inflow of the Eurobond cash which demonstrated that the fundamentals were still strong.