Century bond will lift Ghana out of hand-to-mouth existence – Ken Ofori-Atta

Government will issue sovereign bonds of longer tenor on the international capital markets and also structure a Sovereign Century Fund for the country’s bilateral investor partners next year. Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta announced this in the 2019 budget statement to Parliament on Thursday. “If we really want to uplift ourselves out of this hand-to-mouth existence and put our country Ghana on a firm trajectory of growth and prosperity, we will need to source long.” President Akufo-Addo in September this year on a visit to China intimated his government’s intention to issue a 50 billion dollar century bond. Mr Ofori-Atta, however said government intends to issue sovereign bonds of up to US$3 billion, to be used to finance critical infrastructure projects and for liability management. He added that the government will explore the possibility of issuing one or a combination of Eurobond, and Green bond based on market conditions. A green bond is a bond whose proceeds are used to fund environment-friendly projects. Government’s interest in it may be due to the bond’s increasing popularity with investors at an exponential rate. In 2017 global green bond issuance hit a record $155.5 billion and according to research from the Climate Bonds Initiative could reach 300 billion dollars this year. Examples of green bond projects are those related to clean water, renewable energy, energy efficiency, river and habitat restoration, acquisition of land, or mitigation of climate change impacts. Meanwhile, Ken Ofori-Atta said the Sovereign Century Fund shall engage on a bilateral basis to raise long term concessional financing to underwrite other commercial infrastructure needs. “The Ghana Century bond program will help provide us with the wherewithal to refinance these expensive liabilities. It is an important bulwark for Ghana’s post IMF status; it indicates a country with a long-term plan, a country that can program its infrastructure needs, a country that can provide for adequate foreign exchange reserves.” By Akua Tieku | editors.3news.com | Ghana