Former Ghanaian President and presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Mahama, has hinted at exploring refinancing as a key strategy to manage the country’s mounting debt obligations in the coming years, should he win the upcoming December 7 elections.
In an interview with Bloomberg, monitored by CediTalk.com, Mahama highlighted significant repayment peaks expected in 2026 and 2028, when Ghana will face large domestic and commercial debt payments, following the recent debt restructuring carried out by the current government.
“We’ve not seen the final details of the debt with the commercial creditors, but we’ve looked at some of them and done our own analysis of the repayment schedule. We’re supposed to end at about 55 to 58 percent by 2028,” Mahama said. “But if you look at the analysis, there are two major humps. One in 2026, where a big chunk of the domestic debt, about 182 billion cedis, is supposed to be paid.”
He added, “If you consider that Ghana’s total budget is just above 200 billion cedis, it means that there’s going to be a serious hump. We need to see how to deal with it. Then, the next hump is just before 2028, when there’s a big payment on commercial debt. So, we need to look at how we can refinance some of this to smooth out the trajectory of the debt repayments.”
Mahama suggested that refinancing would involve renegotiating terms with creditors to spread out payments over a longer period. This would provide the government with more flexibility, reduce the immediate fiscal burden, and prevent potential economic instability.
In addition to refinancing, Mahama reiterated his plan to reintroduce a sinking fund and emphasized his strategy to boost Ghana’s oil and gas sector, which he believes could generate much-needed revenue for debt servicing.
“We want to reintroduce a sinking fund, and we also want to work on increasing our oil and gas production. Over the last eight years, Ghana has not been a very friendly environment for upstream producers. So, we’re trying to bring as many of them back as possible, offering them the necessary incentives to ramp up gas and oil production,” he said.
Mahama, who lost his re-election bid in 2016 and failed to stage a comeback in 2020, is widely tipped by both local and international polls as the favorite in Ghana’s 2024 election. His chances have been bolstered by recent trends where incumbent governments in several African nations, as well as in the UK and USA, have lost elections.