The recently introduced Debt Exchange Program for bills relating to cocoa as well as the restructuring of the domestic bonds denominated in dollars are intended to secure debt levels, according to Deputy Minister of Finance Abena Osei-Asare.

She stated that despite being difficult, these actions are now necessary to protect the nation's debt levels in order to comply with the requirements set forth in the Ghana program agreed with IMF help.

“We have taken this painful and difficult pathway because we know the alternative is simply unthinkable,” Osei-Asare said in her remarks at the 2023 Deloitte Economic Dialogue: Pre-Mid-Year Budget Discussion.

Through the Ministry of Finance, the government extended an invitation to qualifying domestic dollar bondholders totaling about US$809 million on July 14, 2023, to swap existing bonds and notes for new ones.

The invitation, which is a follow-up to the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) launched in December 2022, aims to help the government manage its public debt and reduce it to levels that are manageable.

The Ghana COCOBOD also invited owners of its short-term debt securities (cocoa bills) to trade about GH7.93 billion for longer-term debt securities on the same day.