Ghana’s Debt Now GH¢142.5Bn

Ghana’s total public debt stock reached GH¢142.5 billion at the end of December, representing 70 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) up from GH¢122.6 billion at the end of 2016, representing 73.3 percent of GDP.

Out of the total debt stock, domestic debt incurred was GH¢66.7, representing 32.7 percent of GDP from GH¢53.4 billion recorded at the end of 2016, representing 31.9 percent of GDP.

External debt increased from GH¢69.2 billion at the end of December 2016, representing 41.3 percent of GDP to GH¢75.8 representing 37 percent of GDP.

Gross Reserves

Gross International Reserves increased to $6,942 million, an equivalent of 3.8 months of import cover at the end of February 2018 from $6,248.3 million (3.6 months of import cover) at end-2016.

Export Earnings

By the end of February 2018, export earnings had reached 2.8 billion dollars.

Gold raked in a little over one billion dollars, while cocoa fetched cocoa 650 million dollars. Earnings from oil export also reached 664 million dollars.

On the import side, Ghana spent 2.2 billion on imports.

Banking Sector 

In the banking sector, Total Advances of banks saw a drop this year from 38.5 billion cedis in January to 35.8 billion cedis in February. Also, total banking assets stood at 95.1 billion cedis, same as January this year.