Ghana will sell five- and seven-year bonds in the first half, after abandoning offers in 2014, to tap into investor confidence that may emerge when the nation signs an aid deal with the International Monetary Fund.
The biggest economy in West Africa after Nigeria will sell 440 million cedis ($136 million) of five-year bonds each in March and June, the Bank of Ghana said in an auction calender on its website yesterday. The regulator will offer 400 million cedis of seven-year notes in April, it said.
“Around that time they are expecting the IMF program to start, which should consolidate investor confidence,” Courage Kingsley Martey, an economic analyst at Databank Financial Services Ltd. in Accra, said by phone. “With the start of the program, the punitive rates that were quoted by investors at the time in 2014 should not be the case.”
The world’s second-biggest cocoa producer is struggling to rein in a budget deficit that contributed to soaring inflation and credit-rating downgrades. The government is seeking as much as $1 billion in loans from the IMF.
Ghana canceled a sale of five-year bonds in March and a seven-year offer in May. The last auction of five-year debt in September 2013 yielded 19 percent, while seven-year notes were sold at 18 percent two months later. Yields on the benchmark 91-day Treasury bills, sold weekly, rose to 25.84 percent at the Jan. 2 auction.
Credit: bloomberg