Ghana considering Africa’s first social bonds with $2bn sale

Government plans to issue green and social bonds worth up to $2 billion by November, becoming the first African country to sell loans to fund development programs.

Government plans to borrow up to $5 billion on international markets this year, will use the proceeds from these durable bonds to refinance loans used for social and environmental projects and pay for educational or health Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta said in an interview.

The bonds are expected to be issued in the fall and can be maxed out at $2 billion,” Ghana said in March, out of the $3.03 billion it already sold for $5 billion, for which it has budget approval, Ofori-Atta said.

“Of the total, $3.5 billion will be used to refinance debt already raised.

“Our actual new debt will be $1.5 billion,” he said.

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Despite registering its lowest economic growth rate in 37 years in 2020, the country will use the proceeds to move forward with a free post-secondary-school initiative launched in 2017 among other programs.

Sustainable bonds “are not cheap, there is no discount,” Ofori-Atta said.

However we would like to negotiate the best terms.”

It is also working to improve tax revenue collection, which has historically been lower than regional peers.

It is stated by President Nana Akufo-Addo that the tax base had grown more than five-fold to 15.5 million after the government’s April 1, implementation of a system where all national identification numbers serve as tax numbers.

We really want to be able to use digitization to be able to double our tax revenue to about 28% of GDP, so we can build a more vibrant economy over the next three years,” Ofori-Atta said.

He said plans to revive the economy and deepen the state’s purse are in the grip of a new wave of the pandemic.

Tory-Atta said Ghana’s ambition to reach herd immunity by vaccinating 20 million people against Covid-19 has become a challenge mainly because of vaccine nationalization.

In the Western world, there may be about 68 doses per 100 people while in Ghana there are 2 doses per 100 and this cannot continue.”

It has become our Achilles’ heel going forward,” he said.

Source: Bloomberg