Ghana’s gains from its debt restructuring could come under pressure in 2027–2028 as the country faces significant debt maturities that will require early refinancing preparations, the Investment Bank of Africa (IBA) has warned.
The IBA, in its Ghana Economic Framework & 2034 Outlook, said although Ghana’s debt trajectory had improved, the sustainability of the gains would depend on prudent borrowing, transparency and proactive management of upcoming maturities.
“The debt trajectory has improved, but durable access requires prudent borrowing, transparency and pre-funded maturity management,” the report stated.
The report identified the 2027–2028 maturities as a major risk to Ghana’s fiscal outlook and urged government to begin preparations early to avoid renewed pressure on the country’s finances and borrowing costs.
It recommended that the government pre-fund the upcoming maturities through primary budget surpluses, liability-management operations and concessional or multilateral support.
The IBA further called for the maturities to be stress-tested against lower gold prices and a weaker cedi, two factors that could undermine Ghana’s foreign-exchange position and debt-servicing capacity.
“Pre-fund through primary surpluses, liability management and concessional/multilateral support,” the report recommended.
The warning comes as Ghana seeks to consolidate the fiscal gains made following its domestic and external debt restructuring and gradually restore normal access to capital markets.
According to the IBA, Ghana must carefully manage its return to the domestic debt market to avoid recreating the conditions that contributed to the country’s previous debt difficulties.
It recommended that government publish a medium-term domestic debt issuance and sinking-fund plan while gradually lengthening maturities.
The report cautioned against an abrupt return to expensive short-term borrowing, which could increase refinancing pressures and undermine the improvement in debt sustainability.
For external debt, the IBA urged government to complete outstanding official and commercial restructuring agreements with “comparability and transparency,” while ensuring that there are no hidden collateral arrangements or side agreements.
The report also warned against using the improvement in Ghana’s fiscal position as justification for a return to aggressive borrowing.
“Ghana’s fiscal space is real but conditional,” it said, stressing that lower debt ratios and borrowing costs should not be converted into “a new cycle of guarantees, arrears, weak SOE balance sheets and low-return capital spending.”
The IBA’s central scenario projects Ghana’s public debt-to-GDP ratio declining from 45.1 per cent in 2026 to 42.8 per cent in 2028, 40.8 per cent in 2030 and 36.8 per cent by 2034.
However, the report makes clear that this trajectory depends on continued fiscal discipline and successful implementation of reforms.
It recommends that government maintain a primary surplus, clear arrears and execute a credible debt rollover strategy as part of efforts to normalise market access and expand fiscal space.
The report also places restrictions on new non-concessional borrowing, recommending that such borrowing be undertaken only for projects with strong economic returns, foreign-exchange-generating capacity or the potential to reduce imports.
It said such borrowing should be subjected to an “independent economic return and debt-service test.”
The IBA also wants greater transparency around Ghana’s debt obligations, recommending the publication of instrument-level debt, arrears, guarantees, on-lending and State-Owned Enterprise exposures.
It said an investor data room should reconcile debt information from the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Ghana and SOEs.
Beyond the debt stock itself, the report identified several fiscal risks that could undermine the improvement, including SOEs, energy arrears, the cocoa sector and government guarantees.
The energy sector, in particular, remains a significant concern. The IBA estimates payments to independent power producers for energy shortfalls at GH¢19.7 billion, equivalent to 1.2 per cent of GDP.
The report says energy and cocoa reforms are essential to prevent Ghana’s stabilisation gains from being absorbed by recurrent losses and arrears. Ghana’s dependence on commodity revenues also presents a vulnerability to the debt outlook.
The IBA notes that gold remains the country’s largest export and an important anchor for reserve accumulation, but calls for the debt position to be tested under lower gold prices.
The cedi also remains a key risk. The report records a 7.9 per cent depreciation against the US dollar in the first half of 2026 and recommends building natural foreign-exchange hedges and reserves rather than defending an unsustainable exchange-rate level.
The IBA has also modelled a downside scenario in which fiscal slippage, election-cycle deficits, renewed arrears, weak SOE controls, energy losses, a commodity shock and delayed debt-market normalisation push Ghana’s debt ratio back above 50 per cent of GDP.
Under that scenario, economic growth would weaken to 4.5 per cent in 2030 and 4.8 per cent in 2034, compared with 6.1 per cent and 6.0 per cent respectively under the central scenario.
The report, however, stresses that these scenarios are analytical planning estimates and not official government forecasts.
It assigns a 50 per cent probability to the central path, 30 per cent to the transformation scenario and 20 per cent to the downside path as of August 2026.
For the IBA, the immediate priority is therefore to protect the gains already achieved by ensuring that Ghana does not allow lower debt-service pressure to trigger renewed borrowing, arrears or contingent liabilities.
It says the country must “execute primary surplus, zero new arrears, SOE register and rollover strategy” to ensure that the debt trajectory continues to improve and market access normalises.
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