Investors in the country’s money market have observed that Ghana’s benchmark 91-Day treasury bill rate has crashed to about 5%. However, on the other side, the Bank of Ghana is quietly paying commercial banks more than 10% on a bill that matures in just two weeks.
This is an indication that someone is winning big, and it isn’t the taxpayer or individual investors.
If you walked into a bank today to buy a 91-day Government of Ghana Treasury bill, you’d earn about 4.9%, a rate many believe is barely enough to build wealth.
But if you were a commercial bank like GCB, Ecobank, CalBank, and you parked that same cedi with the Bank of Ghana for just 14 days, you’d walk away with an interest rate north of 10.5%. This is more than double what the individual investor in T-Bil earns and it is just for a few days.
For many, on the face value, it is an unfair money. However, their roles are highly nuanced.
Two Bills, Two Very Different Jobs
To understand why this looks so strange, you have to understand that these are not competing products on a shelf. They are two completely different tools, built for two completely different bosses.
For the start, the 91-day Treasury bill belongs to the Ministry of Finance. It’s how government borrows to fund the budget and spend on roads, salaries, debt repayments. Its rate is set the old-fashioned way, which is the determined by the market forces. Thus, banks, pension funds, and ordinary Ghanaians bid for it at a weekly auction, and the price settles wherever supply meets demand.
However, the 14-day OMO bill belongs to the Bank of Ghana. It has nothing to do with funding government. It exists purely to mop up excess cedis sloshing around in the banking system before they spill into the economy and reignite inflation. And crucially, it isn’t auctioned freely, it is issued at the Bank’s own policy rate, currently 14%.
One instrument answers to the market. The other answers to the Governor. That, in a nutshell, is where the story begins.
How the Treasury Bill fell off a Cliff
At the start of 2026, the 91-day T-bill was still paying around 11.1%. By late April, it had crashed to just 4.92%, one of the fastest declines in recent memory. Three forces drove it down:
The first factor is the steep and fast fall of inflation. Headline inflation dropped to 3.7% by May 2026, meaning investors no longer need a huge interest cushion to protect their money from losing value.
In addition, the country is awash with cash looking for a home or what economist describe as high liquidity. Total banking sector assets hit GH¢493.9 billion by April 2026, a 26.6% jump in a single year, driven by rising deposits and stronger bank balance sheets. More money chasing the same pot of T-bills naturally pushes the rate down.
A stable, calm, and an appreciating cedi also played a major role. With the currency more stable, investors no longer demand a hefty premium to guard against a sudden depreciation of the cedi.
For the government, this is unambiguously good news, it now borrows far more cheaply than it did even a year ago. For the ordinary saver relying on T-bills for retirement or school fees, it’s a rude awakening: the golden years of 25–30% T-bill returns are gone.
How the OMO Bill Refused to Follow
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable. While the Treasury bill fell through the floor, the Bank of Ghana’s own 14-day bill barely budged. Through the first half of 2026, it kept trading in a stubborn band of roughly 10.45% to 11.05%, nearly three times the T-bill rate at some points.
This is not an accident, and it isn’t the BoG losing control of the market. It is deliberate strategy. By paying a premium above the market rate, the Bank makes it more attractive for commercial banks to park their spare cedis with it than to release that cash into the economy, where it could fuel inflation.
Think of it as the central bank outbidding the entire market for banks’ idle cash, on purpose, because letting that cash loose could undo two years of hard-won disinflation.
The scale of what’s being sterilised is staggering. As of May 2026, the Bank of Ghana still had roughly GH¢81 billion in outstanding OMO bills, a mountain of liquidity that must be constantly rolled over, at an attractive enough rate to keep banks interested, or risk it flooding back into the system.
In June 2026, the BoG tried a different lever. The Central Bank moved the Cash Reserve Ratio, the share of deposits banks must lock away, earning nothing, to a uniform 20%, a change projected to drain roughly GH¢16 billion from the banking system. But even that wasn’t enough. Excess liquidity in the banking sector proved deeper than expected, so the Bank kept OMO rates elevated even after the drain.
Who’s Actually Cashing In
This is the part that has turned an obscure interest-rate spread into a full-blown political storm. The gap means the central bank is now paying commercial banks more than double the government’s own borrowing rate just to keep excess cash parked and quiet.
And the banks have noticed. Ghana’s commercial banks posted a record GH¢15 billion in profits in 2025, up 43% from GH¢10 billion the year before, with high-yield BoG bills serving as a safe, government-guaranteed cash machine even as broader market yields collapsed.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Ghana itself has been bleeding. Its 2025 financial statements, published at the start of May 2026, showed an operational loss of GH¢15.6 billion, its second-largest loss since the cedi was redenominated in 2008. A huge chunk of that came directly from OMO. The cost of these operations rocketed from GH¢8.2 billion in 2024 to GH¢16.73 billion in 2025.
Why this Matters to the Person on the Street
You might be tempted to shrug this off as a fight between economists and bankers. It isn’t. It touches your wallet in at least three direct ways.
First, your loan didn’t get cheaper, even though the Bank says rates are falling. The Ghana Reference Rate, which banks use to price loans, fell from 15.90% to about 10.03% by May 2026 a huge drop on paper. But with banks able to earn a fat, risk-free return simply parking cash at the BoG, they’ve had little urgency to pass those savings on to the small business owner or the trader looking for working capital.
Second, your Treasury bill savings are earning far less than they used to. If you’re used to the 25–30% T-bill glory days, brace yourself: 91-day rates near 5% are the new normal, at least for now, even as banks quietly earn double that from the central bank.
Third, you’re footing the bill either way. A loss-making central bank isn’t a free lunch. Central bank losses eventually show up somewhere in recapitalisation costs, in constrained policy space, or in the public purse having to backstop the institution that’s supposed to protect the cedi’s value.
The Bottomline
The next Monetary Policy Committee meeting, scheduled for 22nd July 2026, is being watched closely. It’s expected to offer the first formal signal on whether the Bank plans to keep running this expensive, high-stakes balancing act or whether a more targeted, cheaper approach to liquidity management is finally on the table.
Until then, the numbers keep telling the same uncomfortable story: two government-linked instruments, issued days apart in maturity, paying wildly different rates, one crashing toward 5%, the other locked above 10%.
