Dr Mohammed Amin Adam, the Finance Minister, says the central government’s provisional total debt stood at GH¢742 billion (US$50.9 billion) as of June this year.
This figure represents 70.6 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
While delivering the 2024 mid-year budget review in parliament in Accra on Tuesday, Dr Adam said this indicates an increase of 22.0 percent due to the effect of the cedi depreciation and continuous disbursements from creditors.
“The stock consists of external debt of GH¢452.0 billion and domestic debt of GH¢290.0 billion, representing 60.9 percent and 39.1 percent of the total debt stock, respectively.
“As a percentage of GDP, external and domestic debt represented 43.0 percent and 27.6 percent, respectively,” he explained.
He also revealed that following Government’s completion of the debt restructuring, the country has been able to relieve its debt up to the tune of $2.8 billion.
According to Dr. Amin Adam, this debt relief will enable Ghana not to pay back debt obligations to official creditors till 2026.
“We have completed the Debt Restructuring programme with the Official Creditor Committee (OCC), covering US$5.1 billion dollars resulting in approximately 8 billion US Dollars of debt relief. This means that we will not service our debt to our official creditors from 2023 to 2026,” the Minister said.