ABOUT 50 per cent of bondholders have agreed to participate in the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP), the Finance Ministry has said.
Deputy Finance Minister, Abena Osei Asare, who revealed this, said the 50 per cent moves the country closer to the intended 80 per cent target for bondholders to sign up to the DDEP.
“As of yesterday, when we decided to extend and grant that administrative window, we had done above 50 percent,” Osei Asare told the media.
The Deputy Finance Minister added that the government was hopeful that more bondholders who were unable to tender their documents in on Tuesday would complete the process before the new deadline, Friday, 10 February, 2023.
The government, on Tuesday, extended the window for bondholders to complete tender processes as part of the domestic debt exchange programme.
The deadline for signing up for the programme expired on Tuesday, February 7, 2023, but the government, in a late-night press statement, said some of the bondholders faced “technical glitches as they tried to complete the online tender process,” hence the window to enable such persons complete the process.
It has, thus, given such persons three days to complete the online tender process.
“As a result, the government is providing bondholders with a window to complete processes for tendering their bonds, in response to the terms of Exchange as amended pursuant to the 2nd Amended and Restated Exchange Memorandum. This window ends on Friday, 10th February, 2023, at 4:00 p.m. (GMT),” the Finance Ministry announced in a statement signed by Ken Ofori-Atta.
The deputy Finance Minister added that the government needed to conclude the programme to be able to conclude engagement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in March 2023, for the much-needed economic bailout.
BY Jamila Akweley Okertchiri
