Debt Exchange: 'This is the best news for the investor community' – Financial Expert

Finance expert, Christian Tachie-Djan has affirmed that the recent announcement by the finance minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, on the country's measures to minimize the impact of the country's domestic debt exchange on investors comes as good news to investors.

On Sunday, December 4, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, indicated during a press conference that as part of the government's measures to minimize the impact of the country's domestic debt exchange on investors, Treasury bills and individual bond holders will not be affected.

According to Mr. Tachie-Djan, the announcement by Ken Ofori-Atta was convenient given the period of speculation and confusion in the country.

In an interview on the Happy Morning Show with Samuel Eshun, he noted, "There are a lot of means countries go about these 'Haircuts' so we were actually in limbo and weren't sure how the government was going to do it, how it was going to play out at the end of the day. So there were speculations and panic within the investor community. I think because of the heighten speculations that we were getting on the airwaves, people were just coming up with anything desperate to the Ghanaian public so it was expedient that the Finance Minister before the start of the new week, put out a statement so that some calm will be restored in the financial landscape."

"2017 we went through some serious house cleaning exercise as far as the finance landscape is concerned that allowed some banks to be closed while others were merged with existing ones. So it was important that we allowed our finance sector to relay very solid. So yesterday what we got from the Finance Minister I think the investor community should be happy with it," he added.

He further highlighted that, despite the Finance Minister's failure to capture the impact of Ghana's "Haircut" on external creditors, internal investors are safe.

"It did not come out with the external creditors, how these things are going to play out but at least we know that our domestic creditors are safe. Because there are a lot of circulations that people were thinking even those with fixed deposits in the banks will also be affected, treasury bills were going to be affected, bonds and all that and we weren't really sure what was going to happen. So that statement from the Finance Minister I think it has put to rest some of these speculations and I think this is one of the best news the investor community is going to get," he mentioned.