Fitch Upgrades Ghana To ‘CCC’
International rating agency Fitch Ratings has upgraded Ghana’s Long-Term Local-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to ‘CCC’.
It comes eight months after the country struck an International Monetary Fund (IMF) deal in March and got upgraded to ‘RD’. Meanwhile, it has assigned ‘B-“ for Long-Term Foreign-Currency IDR.
Bond Upgrade
The rating agency also assigned ‘CCC’ ratings to six bonds including two interest-only bonds and four domestic US dollar-denominated bonds issued on 4 September 2023.
These bonds were issued as part of the domestic debt exchanges.
Reasons For Upgrade
The promotion follows normalised relations with a significant majority of local-currency creditors, with a participation rate of 92% on local-currency government bonds after the conclusion of the government’s Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP), Fitch noted.
Fitch said it does not consider another round of local-currency debt exchange in the near term.
Other reasons the agency gave include an expected agreement with creditors to restructure USD20 billion of external debt by mid-2024; anticipated decline in government debt to 87% of GDP at end-2023 from 89%; projected improvement in primary fiscal balance by about 2pp by 2025; and forecasted surplus current account in 2024 and 2025.
