The country’s debt stock has reached GH¢112.4 billion as at September this year a summary of economic and financial data released by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) has revealed. This represents 67.4 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
This came to the fore after BoG’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) met last week to review the health of the economy.
The new amount, according to the November report shows that from July to September, the public debt has gone up by GH¢6.2 billion.
This is because the last time the Central Bank released the data on these debt stock was up to July 2016.
The increase does not necessarily mean that there have been fresh borrowings by government from July to September.
Other factors like the cedis’ marginal depreciation and possible delays in interest payments could have resulted in the debt numbers recording such a significant increase.
However, there appear to be some discrepancies, with the financial data released by the Bank of Ghana when it comes to the public debt compared its last report issued.
A close look at the data ending September, which was initially released by the Bank during their last MPC meeting, the debt stock as at July was GH¢109.8 billion.
This should mean that from July to September 2016, the debt stock could have increased just been by GH¢2.6 billion.
But a study of the new data put out by the Central Bank ending November, which is based on figures from the Finance Ministry, the debt stock as at July 2016 was GH¢106.2 billion.
August recorded a debt stock of GH¢109. 3 billion and September was GH¢112.4 billion.
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