Accra, Sept. 7, GNA – Fidelity Bank has emphasised building a broader and deeper financing architecture to help shape the next phase of Ghana’s economic development.
The Bank recently convened a landmark ‘Debt Capital Markets Conference’ to discuss how stakeholders could convert the country’s macroeconomic stability into long-term capital for productive investment.
Speaking at the opening, Mr Julian Opuni, the Managing Director, Fidelity Bank Ghana, noted that the past three years had focused on stabilisation and it was time to improve conditions.
“For capital-market participants, improving macroeconomic conditions are not an end in themselves. The practical question is how we convert macroeconomic stability into efficiently priced, long-term capital for productive investment,” he said.
He argued that a growing economy could not rely on a single funding channel and pointed to Fidelity Bank’s role in the market, having supported debt capital-market transactions with an aggregate value exceeding GHS 30 billion.
“A deep debt capital market is built from transaction by transaction, but it develops institution by institution,” he said.
The session brought together personnel from the Bank of Ghana, the Ministry of Finance, the Ghana Stock Exchange/Ghana Fixed Income Market, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Pensions Regulatory Authority, institutional investors, issuers, and market leaders.
Held on the theme: “Lower Rates, Higher Opportunity: Unlocking Growth Through the Debt Capital Markets,” the conference sought to shift national conversation from strengthening economic fundamentals to building the foundations for durable growth in the debt capital markets.
Dr Johnson Pandit Asiama, the Governor of the Bank of Ghana, confirmed the strength of Ghana’s recovery, indicating that Real GDP growth reached 6.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2026.
Headline inflation had also fallen from a peak of 54.1 per cent in December 2022 to 4.6 per cent in July 2026, while gross international reserves stood at US$12.9 billion, he said.
Dr Asiama described the reopening of the domestic bond market in March, following the expiry of the three-year restriction imposed under the Debt Exchange, as the most significant development of the year.
“This is a milestone; a transition from crisis management to active, orderly debt management,” he said.
“The true measure of a deeper market would be found not on an auction sheet, but in that power project that was completed, that factory that expanded, the housing development that was financed, and the SME that finds room on a bank’s balance sheet because the right capital reached the right use.”
Madam Abena Amoah, Managing Director, Ghana Stock Exchange, reflected on the market’s decade-long journey since the founding of the Ghana Fixed Income Market in 2015, stressing that markets were ultimately institutions of trust built through cooperation.
She noted that Ghana’s debt capital market remained heavily concentrated around sovereign issuance, with corporate securities representing only a small fraction of activity.
“A market built predominantly around one issuer cannot achieve its full potential without broader private-sector participation,” she said, calling on banks like Fidelity Bank to lead the way as issuers and as originators for their corporate clients.
Mr Kwame Pianim, a veteran economist and investment consultant, cautioned that macroeconomic stability must be protected during the transition to growth, urging stronger institutions and the disciplined mobilisation of domestic pension and insurance funds for productive investment.
Dr Theophilus Acheampong, Technical Advisor at the Ministry of Finance, said reforms, including legislated fiscal rules, an independent fiscal council, and a resourced sinking fund, were designed to institutionalise stability and prevent a relapse.
GNA
Edited by Agnes Boye-Doe