First Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG) has said the recent bond issued by the government to settle the debt in the energy sector under the Energy Sector Levy Act (ESLA) has been fully subscribed by domestic market players.

This development according to Dr Maxwell Opoku Afari is an indication that the local private sector players are getting attracted to the bond market as a result of prudent measures introduced by the Bank of Ghana.

Dr Afari said the BoG is working hard to ensure that the growing interest and attraction by domestic investors is improved for the government to use the market to raise funds for development purposes.

He was speaking at the sidelines of the Ghana-EU Business forum in Accra on the topic: ‘The challenges of the monetary policy and markets development in Ghana.’

Dr Afari said, "We need to broaden the scope of government financing without crowding out the private sector through the development of a liquid bond market. The government is doing that by working to extend the yield curve of the domestic bond market, working to bring all other pension funds and the private sector to participate in the government bond market.”

He added “By re-profiling the government debt, what you see is that the yield trend is beginning to align properly with a lower interest rate at the bottom end as we move into a higher tenor bond we see a higher interest rate. This is beginning to shape the domestic market and attracting a lot of private investors domestically to participate.”

Dr Afari said, “For example, the government issued a GH¢6 billion ESLA bond and almost 98 per cent of those bonds were taken out by domestic participants, in fact, there was no foreign participation in the ESLA bonds. That shows the depth and a level of appetite that we have in the domestic market and we're working hard to ensure that this market develops to support the financing of government activities in Ghana."

Source: myjoyonline.com