Ghana's debt stock shoots up

New figures from the Bank of Ghana show that Ghana’s total debt stock is now GHC205.5 billion as of July 2019.

It represents 59.4 percent of GDP.

According to the central bank, the debt ballooned by GHC5.5 billion between May and July this year.

As of March 2019, the debt stock was US$38.9 billion (GHC198 billion), GHC2 billion shy of GHC200 billion, per the central bank’s Summary of Economic and Financial Data – May 2019.

It represented 57.5 percent of Ghana’s GDP as of that period.

In January this year, the total public debt was GHC176.6 billion (US$35.7 billion) and GHC180.7 billion (US$35 billion) for February.

The figure for January and February represented 51.3 percent and 52.5 percent of GDP, respectively.

A total of GHC21.4 billion was added to the public debt in the first three months of 2019.

The current debt stock of GHC205.5 billion is made up of an external debt of US$20.4 billion representing 31 percent of GDP and a domestic debt of GHS98 billion cedis representing 28.4 percent of GDP.