The Minister of Finance, Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam, has revealed that the successful execution of the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) saved Ghana $12 billion.
The Minister shared these insights during a panel discussion held on Wednesday, October 23, organised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group as part of their Annual Meetings.
The focus of the discussion was on the challenges faced by low-income countries in debt management, a significant bottleneck for nations grappling with financial instability caused by global economic issues and other external shocks.
According to Dr. Amin Adam, DDEP had been a crucial policy measure in addressing the financial challenges faced by Ghana, as well as reducing its debt burden and creating a more sustainable fiscal environment.
He also stated that the DDEP, launched in December 2022, was a significant achievement that established the foundation for more extensive debt restructuring initiatives.
Dr. Amin Adam mentioned that the innitiattive necessitated bondholders to exchange their bonds for new ones with differnt terms, a significant step aimed at reducing the government’s debt service obligations.
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He disclosed that plans are far advanced to restructure about $2.7 billion of its debt with commercial creditors.
“The DDEP was a great success and we followed that with the restructuring of our bilateral debt, which was also very successful and this led to a significant savings of about $2.8 billion and then following this, the restructuring of our Eurobonds which is about $13 billion, which was concluded in the first week of this month which is another great success.
“The benefits we have derived from this so far include an outright debt cancellation of about $5 billion and another debt service relief of about $4.3 billion and so between the bilateral creditors and the Eurobonds, we are talking about savings of about $12 billion and we think this is a great success and we are still having an outstanding restructuring with our commercial creditors involving about $2.7 billion and we are working very hard to conclude that.”
