12th July 2023 9:14:08 AM
2 mins readAmong some top 15 African nations, Ghana is said to have the highest interest rates, surpassing that of Egypt.The rates for the 91-day and 182-day treasury bills were approximately 24.39% and 26.03%, respectively, according to the Weekly Fixed Income Update put together by several investment firms, making Ghana the highest rates among the sampled leading African economies.Egypt followed Ghana closely with a 91-day Treasury bill rate of 23.
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41%, whilst the 182-day T-bill is going for 24.02%.Its currency – the Egyptian Pound – has also been recording rapid depreciation to the dollar.Seychelles has the lowest interest rates of about 0.95% among the top African countries and is followed by Nigeria with 2.87%.
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The Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) caused Ghana's rates to drop dramatically in March 2023, but since then they have steadily increased to about 30% (364-day bill), ranking them among the highest in the world. Since March 2023, the 91-day bill and 182-day bill have decreased by 10.97% and 9.95%, respectively.Ghana has some of the highest average lending rates on the African continent, at about 38%.
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As the government looks for extra liquidity to finance its initiatives, the majority of analysts have forecast an increase in interest rates in the upcoming week. This follows from the Bank of Ghana's Open Market Operations bills having competitive returns.In fact, due to the inflation's unrelenting pace, actual returns on short-term securities are now negative.
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Although some analysts have stated that any such move may have an impact on the real sector of the economy, it is uncertain whether the Bank of Ghana will hike its Monetary Policy Rate from the present 29.5% in order to help mop up surplus cash in circulation to manage inflation.
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