It affirmed all long-term senior unsecured foreign-currency-denominated issue ratings at ‘C’ and withdrew their ratings. It affirmed the partially-guaranteed $1 billion notes maturing in 2030 at ‘CC’.
Again, “The issue ratings for all other long-term senior unsecured foreign-currency (FC)-denominated instruments have been withdrawn as these instruments are no longer considered by Fitch to be outside the agency’s purview as the sovereign has announced a moratorium. These instruments and they will be included in the general framework external debt restructuring,” it said
Fitch expects all of these remaining instruments to default in due course, as the sovereign avoids debt service payments or comes to an agreement to restructure bonds.
Ghana missed a $40.6 million coupon payment on its $1 billion 2026 Eurobond on Friday, as part of a suspension of payments on selected external debt announced by the government in December, Fitch said.
Fitch does not normally assign outlooks to sovereigns with a rating of ‘CCC+’ or below.
The downgrade was attributed to the government’s decision to launch a debt swap program and the recent default on local bonds maturing on February 6, 2023 and another due this week.
“The downgrade of Ghana’s local-currency denominated debt follows the completion of a domestic debt swap proposal by the Republic of Ghana. The transaction is a component of the recovery program for which the government is seeking International Monetary Fund support for a 3-year Extended Credit Facility (ECF) of about $3 billion.
The rating agency, recently, downgraded Ghana’s creditworthiness to junk status.
